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CASPAR HAUSER 



AN 

ACCOUNT 



OF AN INDIVIDUAL KEPT IN A DUNGEON, SEPARATED 

FROM ALL COMMUNICATION WITH THE WORLD, 

FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD TO ABOUT THE 

AGE OF SEVENTEEN. 



DRAWN UP FROM LEGAL DOCUMENTS. 



BY ANSELM VON FEUERBACH, 

President of one of the Bavarian Courts of Appeal, &c. 



Righteous Heaven, who has permitted 
All this wo; what fatal crime, 
Was by me, e'en at the time 
Of my hapless birth, committed. 

SlGISMUKD. 

In Caldcron's Life, a Dream, 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN. 

SECOND EDITION. 



BOSTON: 
ALLEN AND TICKNOR. 

1833. 



cTi««* 

ft : 3 



THE LIBRARY 

I dF CONGRESS 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1832, 

By Allen and Ticknor, 

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of 

Massachusetts. 



I. R. BUTTS, SCHOOL STREET. 



DEDICATION. 



TO HIS LORDSHIP, THE EARL OF STANHOPE, 
Peer of Great Britain, &c. 

To no one could this dedication have been 
addressed with greater propriety than to your 
Lordship ; in whose person, Providence has 
appointed to the youth, without childhood and 
boyhood, a paternal friend and powerful protec- 
tor. Beyond the sea, in fair old England, you 
have prepared for him a secure retreat, until 
the rising sun of truth shall have dispersed the 
darkness which still hangs over his mysterious 
fate ; perhaps, in the remainder of his half 
murdered life, he may yet hope for days, for 
the sake of which, he will no longer regret 
his having seen the light of this world. For 
such a deed, none but the genius of humanity 
can recompense you. 

In the vast desert of the present times, when 
a2 



iv 

the hearts of individuals are more and more 
shrivelled and parched by the fires of selfish 
passions, to have met once more with a real 
man, is one of the most pleasing and indelibly 
impressive occurrences which have adorned 
the evening scenery of my life. 

With inmost veneration and love, I am, 
your Lordship's most obedient servant, 
VON FEUERBACH. 



PREFACE. 



In offering the following pages to the pub- 
lic, it will be necessary to say but a very few 
words on the subject of them, or of their distin- 
guished German author and the American 
translator, in order to show the peculiar 
claims, which they have to the attention of the 
reader. Caspar Hauser, the subject of this 
work, is the individual of whom many per- 
sons will recollect to have seen, some years 
ago, an account in the papers of the day. 
He was then represented as having been 
found in Nuremberg in a state, which 
threw the greatest mystery over his pre- 
vious life. Hauser was at that time, about 
sixteen of seventeen years old, had never 
learned to speak, and soon showed that he 
had been shut out during his whole life from 
all communication with the world. A nar- 
row, dark dungeon, in which he was always 



obliged to remain in a sitting posture, so that 
even his bones had assumed a peculiar shape ? 
had been all the space allowed to the unhappy 
being in this wide world ; water and coarse 
bread, all the food he had ever tasted ; a shirt, 
all his clothing ; and now and then stripes 7 
inflicted by the unseen hand of his fiendish 
keeper, when he happened to make a noise 
— ail he knew of any being besides himself. 
He was but just allowed to vegetate — and 
what a wretched vegetation ! in his forlorn 
condition. 

Great pains, as the reader will see, have 
been taken, without success, to raise the veil 
of mystery hanging over this foul transaction, 
continued even by an attempt to murder the 
youth, when it was falsely reported in the 
newspapers, that he was occupied with writing 
his biography. But the great attention, 
which was thus directed to him has, though 
unsuccessful as to the detection of the perpe- 
trators of the crime, not been without its 
fruits, and it may be easily imagined, how 
interesting must be a faithful account, like 
the following, of the process of physical and 
intellectual acclimatisation to life, if we may 
be allowed to use this expression, which a 
youth must undergo to fit him for society — 



Vll 



for life and light, after his soul, intellect and 
body had been left from his birth dormant 
and undeveloped — abandoned to perfect soli- 
tude. Light had never shone upon this be- 
ing, neither on his eye, nor on his soul ; and 
when he emerged from his lonesome dark- 
ness, he was like a new born child in respect 
to all which must be acquired by experience, 
whilst the instruments for acquiring that ex- 
perience, the natural faculties, of course differ- 
ed from those of a child so far as they are 
affected by the mere age or growth of the in- 
dividual. Thus he presented an opportunity 
for observation of the highest interest to the 
psychological and moral philosopher, the re- 
ligious teacher, the physiologist and physi- 
cian — an opportunity which must be as rare 
as the crime which has afforded it. 

Uncommonly attractive, however, as the 
account of this interesting individual must 
prove to every reflecting reader, whether he 
considers particularly the moral, the intellec- 
tual or physical condition of the being describ- 
ed, its value is much enhanced to the lawyer 
by the legal point of view in which its philoso- 
phical and eminent author in one part of the 
work examines his subject as constituting a 
species of crime, never yet duly treated by 



V11I 



any code or legislation — a view, forcibly ex- 
pressed in the title of the German original, 
which is thus, Kaspar Hauser, Beispiel 
eines Verbrechens am Seelenlehen des Mens- 
chen* which, literally translated, would be, 
K. H. An Instance of a Crime against the 
Life of the Soul (the Development of all its 
intellectual, moral and immortal parts) of man. 
We are sorry not to be able to preserve this 
title in English, the reasons for which how- 
ever, are obvious. Mr Von Feuerbach is 
well known, as one of the most distinguished 
jurists of the age, both for his extensive learn- 
ing and the philosophical acuteness display- 
ed in his numerous works, chiefly on penal 
law. He, moreover, drew up the penal code 
of Bavaria, and is at this time president of 
one of the Bavarian courts of appeal, t Noth- 
ing indifferent can come from his pen, nothing 
doubtful be guaranteed by his name ; and it 
is hardly necessary to add that the whole ac- 
count is founded on official documents, wher- 
ever it pretends to give positive facts, and that 

* Ansbach, 1832. 

t A sketch of Mr Von Feuerbach's life, and an enu- 
meration of his principal works may be found in the 
Encyclopaedia Americana. 



IX 



the only duty of those who offer a work of so 
eminent an author to the public of another 
country, is to give an exact translation. 

In conclusion, we would mention that the 
translator of this work is the same gentleman, 
who has done himself so much credit by an 
English version of Mr Cousin's History of 
Philosophy * a task of no common difficulty, 
and yet so successfully performed as to be a 
pledge for the faithful executionof the present 
work. FRANCIS LIEBER,. 

Boston, Nov. 1832. 



Note to the Second Edition. Though 
but a few months have elapsed since the first 
edition of this w T ork was issued, a second one 
is called for, which we herewith offer to the 
public, adding that no changes, except the 
correction of a few errata, have been made 
in it. f. l. 



* Introduction to the History of Philosophy by Vic- 
tor Cousin, Professor of Philosophy. Translated 
from the French by Henning Gottfried Linberg. Bos- 
ton, 1832. 



CASPAR HAUSER 



CHAPTER I. 

Whitmonday is at Nuremberg a day of 
great festivity ; when most of its inhabitants 
sally forth from the city, and disperse them- 
selves in the neighboring country and vil- 
lages. The appearance of the city, which, 
in consequence of the present scantiness of 
its population, is very straggling, reminds us 
on such occasions, and particularly in fine 
spring weather, rather of an enchanted city in 
the desert, than of an active, bustling, man- 
ufacturing town ; and many secret deeds may, 
in situations remote from its centre, then be 
done publicly, without ceasing to be secret. 

It was on Whitmonday, the 26th of May, 
1828, in the evening between four and five 
o'clock, that the following occurrence took 
place. 

A citizen, who lived at the so called Un- 
1 



schlitt place, near the small and little fre- 
quented Haller gate, was still loitering before 
his door, and was about to proceed upon his 
intended ramble through the new gate, when, 
looking around him, he remarked at a little 
distance a young man in a peasant's dress, 
who was standing in a very singular posture, 
and, like an intoxicated person, was endea- 
voring to move forward, without being fully 
able either to stand upright or to govern the 
movements of his legs. The citizen ap- 
proached the stranger, who held out to him a 
letter, directed " To his honor the Captain 
of the 4th Esgataron of the Shwolishay re- 
giment. Nuremberg." As the Captain, 
apparently referred to, lived near the New- 
gate, the citizen took the strange youth along 
with him to the guard room, whence the 
latter was conducted to the dwelling of Cap- 
tain von W. who at that time commanded 
the 4th squadron of the 6th regiment of 
Chevaux legers, and who lived in the neigh- 
borhood.* The stranger advanced towards 

* The depositions concerning what passed while 
Caspar and the above mentioned citizen were on their 
way from the Unschlitt place to the guard room and 
thence to Captain von W 's dwelling, are sodefec- 



die captain's servant who opened the door, 
with his hat on his head and the letter in his 

live, so unsatisfactory, and withal so apocryphical, that 
I have thought proper to reduce their contents within 
a very narrow compass. Thus, for instance, the citi- 
zen mentioned before has deposed, that, after many 
attempts to enter into conversation with Caspar, and 
after having asked him several questions, he at length 
perceived that Caspar neither knew nor had the least 
conception of what he meant, and that he therefore 
ceased to speak to him. From this circumstance it 
would appeal-, that Caspar's conduct towards him was 
the same as it was the same evening, at Captain von 

W 9 s, and afterwards at the guard room ; and as 

it continued to be for several days and weeks in suc- 
cession. Nevertheless the same citizen has also 
stated, that Caspar had replied to the question, whence 
he came ? " from Regensburg." And also, that when 
they came to the new gate, Caspar had said ; " that 
has just been built since they call it the new gate," 
&c. That witness fully believes that he heard such 
expressions, appears to me to be as certain, as that 
Caspar never said any such thing. This is fully proved 
by all that follows. For it is highly probable that the 
words which Caspar repeatedly uttered " Reuta waehn 
wie mein Votta waehn is," may have thus been 
understood by his conductor, who would scarcely 
have paid much attention to the words of such a 
simpleton as he conceived him to be. But upon the 
whole, the official documents showing the proceedings 
of the police on this occasion prove, that they have 
been so irregular that the depositions taken contain so 



hand, with the following words : " ae sechtene 
mocht ih waehn, wie mei Votta waehn is." 
The servant asked him what he wanted ? 
who he was ? whence he came ? But the 
stranger appeared to understand none of 
these questions 5 and his only reply was a 
repetition of the words " ae sechtene mocht 
ih waehn, wie mei Votta waehn is," or " wo 
as nit." He was, as the captain's servant 
declared in his deposition, so much fatigued 
that he could scarcely be said to walk, but 
rather to stagger. Weeping, and with the 
expression of excessive pain, he pointed to 
his feet, which were sinking under him; and 
he appeared to be suffering from hunger and 
thirst. A small piece of meat was handed 
to him ; but scarcely had the first morsel 
touched his lips, when he shuddered, the 
muscles of his face were seized with convul- 
sive spasms, and, with visible horror he spit 
it out. He showed the same marks of aver- 
sion when a glass of beer was brought to him, 
and he had tasted a few drops of it. A bit 

many contradictions that the witnesses have been so 
slightly examined, and that many of their assertions 
contain anachronisms which are so very palpable ; that 
these documents cannot, without much caution, be 
admitted as genuine sources of historical truth. 



of bread and a glass of fresh water, he 
swallowed greedily and with extreme satis- 
faction. In the meantime, all attempts to 
gain any information respecting his person or 
his arrival were altogether fruitless. He 
seemed to hear without understanding, to see 
without perceiving, and to move his feet with- 
out knowing how to use them for the pur- 
pose of walking. His language consisted 
mostly of tears, moans, and unintelligible 
sounds, or of the words, which he frequently 
repeated : " Reuta wahn, wie mei Votta 
wahn is." In the Captain's house, he was 
soon taken for a kind of savage, and, in ex- 
pectation of the captain's return, he was con- 
ducted to the stable, where he immediately 
stretched himself on the straw, and fell into 
a profound sleep. 

He had already slept for some hours, when 
the Captain returned and went directly to his 
stable, in order to see the savage human be- 
ing of whom his children, at his first entrance, 
had related so many strange things. He 
still lay in a profound sleep. Attempts were 
made to awaken him ; he was jogged, he was 
shaken and thumped, but all to no purpose. 
They raised him from the ground, and en- 



6 



deavored to place him on bis feet. But he 
still continued to sleep, and seemed, like a 
person apparently dead, to be distinguishable 
from one who is really so, only by his vital 
heat. At length, after many troublesome and 
painful experiments upon the sleeper's capa- 
city of feeling, he opened his eyes, he awoke, 
he gazed at the bright colors of the Captain's 
glittering uniform which he seemed to regard 
with childish satisfaction, and then groaned 

out his " Reuta, fee." Captain von W 

knew nothing of the stranger, nor could he 
learn anything relating to him from the letter 
which he had brought. And as, by question- 
ing, nothing could be got out of him but, 
" Reuta wahn, &c : " or " woas nit ; " nothing 
remained to be done, but to leave the solu- 
tion of this riddle and the care of the stran- 
ger's person to the city police. He was ac- 
cordingly sent forthwith to the police office. 
At about 8 o'clock in the evening his 
journey thither, which, in his situation, was 
a course of martyrdom, was accomplished. 
In the guard room, besides some of the 
inferior magistrates, several soldiers of the 
police were present. All of them regarded the 
strange lad as a most extraordinary phenom- 



enon. Nor was it easy to decide to which 
of the common rubricks of police business 
his case appertained. The common offi- 
cial questions, what is your name ? what is 
your business ? whence came you ? for what 
purpose are you come ? where is your pass- 
port ? and the like, were here of no avail. 
" Ae Reuta waehn wie mei Votta waehn 
is," or ; " woas nit, " or, which he also often 
repeated in a lamentable tone, " hoam 
weissa ! " were the only words which, on the 
most diverse occasions he uttered.* 

He appeared neither to know nor to suspect 
where he was. He betrayed neither fear, 
nor astonishment, nor confusion ; he rather 
showed an almost brutish dulness, which 
either leaves external objects entirely unno- 
ticed, or stares at them without thought, and 
suffers them to pass without being effected 
by them. His tears and whimpering, while 
he was always pointing to his tottering feet, 
and his awkward, and at the same time 

* To these expressions and particularly, " Rueta, 
waehn," &c, he attached, as was afterwards discov- 
ered, no particular meaning. They were only sounds, 
whi^h had been taught him like a parrot, and which 
he uttered as the common expressions of all his ideas, 
sensations and desires. 



8 



childish demeanor soon excited the compas- 
sion of all who were present. A soldier 
brought him a piece of meat and a glass of 
beer ; but, as at the house of Captain von 

W , he rejected both with abhorrence, 

and ate only bread with fresh water. Another 
person gave him a piece of coin. At this 
he showed the joy of a little child ; played 
with it and by several times crying ross, 
ross, [horse, horse] as well as by certain 
motions of his hands, he seemed to express 
his wish to hang this coin about the neck of 
some horse. His whole conduct and demea- 
nor, seemed to be that of a child scarcely two 
or three years old, with the body of a young 
man. 

The only difference of opinion that seemed 
to exist among the greater part of these po- 
lice men, was, whether he should be consi- 
dered as an idiot or a madman, or as a kind 
of savage. One or two of them expressed, 
however, a doubt, whether, under the ap- 
pearance of this boy some cunning deceiver 
might not possibly be concealed. This sus- 
picion received no small degree of confirma- 
tion from the following circumstance. Some 
person thought of trying whether he could 



9 



write ; and handing him a pen with ink, laid 
a sheet of paper before him with an intimation 
that he should write. This appeared to give 
him pleasure, he took the pen, by no means 
awkwardly, between his fingers, and wrote, 
to the astonishment of all who were present, 
in legible characters, the name, Kaspar 
Hauser. 

He was now told to add also the name of 
the place whence he came. But he did noth- 
ing more than occasionally to groan out, his 
" Reuta waehn, " &c, his u hoam weissa," 
and his " woas nit." 

As nothing more could be done, for the 
present, he was delivered to a servant of the 
police, who conducted him to the tower at 
the Vestner gate, which is used as a place 
of confinement for rogues, and vagabonds, 
&c. Upon this comparatively short way he 
sank down groaning at almost every step, if, 
indeed, his groping movements may be called 
steps. Having reached the small apartment 
in which, together with another prisoner of 
the police, he was confined, he sank down 
immediately upon his straw bed, in a profound 
sleep. 



CHAPTER II. 

Caspar Hauser — this name he has hither- 
to retained — wore upon his head, when he 
came to Nuremberg, a round and rather 
coarse felt hat, shaped like those worn in 
cities, lined with yellow silk, and bound with 
red leather, inside of which a picture of the 
city of Munchen, half scratched out, was 
still visible. The toes of his naked feet peep- 
ed forth from a pair of high heeled boots, 
shod with iron shoes and nails, which were 
much torn and did not fit him. Around his 
neck was tied a black silk neck cloth. Over 
a coarse shirt,* and a half faded red spotted 
stuff waistcoat he wore a sort of jacket, such 

* Which imprudently, together with the hoots, was, 
as was asserted, on account of their bad condition, 
thrown away very soon after this occurrence took 
place. So little attention was paid to things which, 
in point of circumstantial evidence, might have be- 
come highly important. 



u 



as are commonly worn by country folks, and 
called janker or schalk, but which, as was 
afterwards proved by a more minute inspec- 
tion of it and by the declaration of compe- 
tent judges, was not originally cut out by the 
tailor for a peasant jacket. It had formerly, 
as also appears from the cut of its cape, been 
a frock coat, of which the skirts had been cut 
off and the upper part sewed up with coarse 
stitches by a hand unaccustomed to tailor's 
work. Also the pantaloons which were made 
of gray cloth of a somewhat finer quality, and 
which, like overalls for riding, were lined be- 
tween the legs with the same cloth, seemed 
originally to have belonged rather to some 
footman, groom, or forester, than to a peasant. 
Caspar wore a white handkerchief with red 
crossed stripes, marked in red with the ini- 
tials K. H. Besides some blue and white 
figured rags, a key of german manufacture, 
and a paper of gold sand — which no one 
surely would look for in a peasant's cottage — 
there were found in his pocket a small horn 
rosary, and a pretty considerable store of 
spiritual wealth, viz. besides manuscript cath- 
olic prayers, several printed, spiritual publi- 



12 



cations, such as, in the south of Germany and 
particularly at places to which pilgrims resort, 
are commonly offered in exchange for good 
money, to the faithful multitude. In some, 
the places where they were printed were not 
named. Others appeared to have been print- 
ed at Altottingen, Burghausen, Salzburg, 
and Prague. Their edifying titles were, for 
instance, " Spiritual sentinel/' — " Spiritual 
forget me not" — " A very powerful prayer 
by virtue of which one may- participate in the 
benefits of all holy masses," &c : — " Pray- 
er to the holy guardian angel," — Prayer 
to the holy blood," he. One of these pre- 
cious little spiritual works, entitled : " The art 
of regaining lost time and years misspent" 
(without mentioning the year of publication) 
seems to contain a scoffing allusion to the life 
which this youth, according to what he after- 
wards related, had hitherto led. Judging 
from these spiritual donations, there can be 
no doubt, that the hands concerned in this 
transaction were not exclusively secular. 
The letter addressed, without naming him, 
to the Captain of the fourth Squadron of the 
sixth regiment of Chevaux-legers, which 



13 



Caspar held in his hand when he first appear- 
ed in Nuremberg, runs as follows :* 

" From a place, near the Bavarian frontier which shall 
be nameless, 1828. 

"HIGH AND WELL BORN CAPTAIN ! 

" I send you a boy who wishes faithfully 
to serve his king. This boy was left in my 
house the 7th day of October, 1812 ; and I 
am myself a poor day laborer, who have also 
ten children and have enough to do to main- 
tain my own family. The mother of the 
child only put him in my house for the sake 
of having him brought up. But I have never 
been able to discover who his mother is ; 
nor have I ever given information to the pro- 
vincial court that such a child was placed in 
my house. I thought I ought to receive him 
as my son. I have given him a christian 

* This letter agrees in the German original literally 
with the manuscript alluded to ; which, from its style 
and orthography, appears evidently to have been in- 
tended to pass for the production of some ignorant 
peasant. No attempt has been made by the translator 
to retain, in this respect, its original character. It has 
been simply translated into plain English, according to 
what appeared to be the most obvious signification of 
the words, whose meaning however is not in all its 
parts perfectly intelligible, 
2 



14 



education ; and since 18121 have never suf- 
fered him to take a single step out of my 
house. So that no one knows where he was 
brought up. Nor does he know either the 
name of my house or where it is. You may 
ask him, but he cannot tell you. 1 have al- 
ready taught him to read and write, and he 
writes, my handwriting exactly as I do. And 
when we asked him what he would be, he 
said he would be one of the Chevaux-legers, 
as his father w r as. If he had had parents dif- 
ferent from what he has, he would have be- 
come a learned lad. If you show him any- 
thing, he learns it immediately. I have only 
showed him the way to Neumark, whence he 
was to go to you. I told him, that when he 
had once become a soldier I should come to 
take him home, or I should lose my head. 
Good Mr Captain, you need not try him ; he 
does not know the place where 1 am. I took 
him away in the middle of the night, and he 
knows not the way home. 

" I am your most obedient servant. 1 do 
not sign my name, for I might be punished. 
He has not a kreutzer of money ; because I 
have none myself. If you do not keep him, 



15 



you may get rid of him, or let him be scram- 
bled for." 

With this letter, which was written in Ger- 
man characters, the following note, written in 
Latin characters, but evidently by the same 
hand, was inclosed : 

" The child is already baptised. You must 
give him a surname yourself. You must ed- 
ucate the child. His father was one of the 
Chevaux-legers. When he is 17 years old 
send him to Nuremberg to the sixth Chevaux- 
leger regiment, for there his father also was. 
I ask for his education until he is seventeen 
years old. He was born the 30th of April, 
1812. I am a poor girl and cannot support 
him. His father is dead." 

Caspar Hauser* was, when he appeared 
at Nuremberg, four feet nine inches in 
height and about from sixteen to seventeen 
years old. His chin and lips were very 
thinly covered with down ; the so called 

* The following description of his person is not taken 
from the records of the police, where it was not to be 
found ; but from my own observations and from the 
witten notes of persons on whom full reliance may 
be placed. 



16 



wisdom teeth were yet wanting; nor did 
they make their appearance before the 
year 1831. His light brown hair, which 
was very fine and curled in ringlets, was cut 
according to the fashion of peasants. The 
structure of his body, which was stout and 
broad shouldered, showed perfect symmetry 
without any visible defect. His skin was fine 
and very fair ; his complexion was not florid, 
but neither was it of a sickly hue ; his limbs 
were delicately built ; his small hands were 
beautifully formed ; and his feet, which show- 
ed no marks of ever before having been con- 
fined or pressed by a shoe, were equally so. 
The soles of his feet, which were without any 
horny skin, were as soft as the palms of his 
hands ; and they were covered all over with 
blood blisters, the marks of which were some 
months later still visible. Both his arms 
showed the scars of inoculation ; and on his 
right arm, a wound still covered with a fresh 
scab was observable, which, as Caspar after- 
wards related, was occasioned by a blow 
given him with a stick or a piece of wood by 
the man " with whom he had always been," 
because he had made rather too much noise. 
His face was at that time very vulgar : when 



17 



in a state of tranquillity it was almost without 
any expression ; and its lower features, be- 
ing somewhat prominent, gave him a brutish 
appearance. The staring look of his blue 
but clear and bright eyes had also an ex- 
pression of brutish obtuseness.* The forma- 
tion of his face altered in a few months al- 
most entirely ; his countenance gained ex- 
pression and animation, the prominent lower 
features of his face receded more and more, 
and his earlier physiognomy could scarcely 
any longer be recognised. His w r eeping was 
at first only an ugly contortion of his mouth ; 
but, if anything pleasant affected his mind, a 
lovely, smiling, heart winning sweetness dif- 
fused over all his features the irresistible charm 
that lies concealed in the joy of an innocent 
child. He scarcely at all knew how to use 
his hands and fingers. He stretched out 
his fingers, stiff and straight and far asunder, 
with the exception of his first finger and 

* The author expressed at that time, his wish that 
Caspar's picture might be taken by a skilful portrait 
painter ; because he felt assured that his features 
would soon alter. His wish was not gratified, but 
bis prediction was very soon fulfilled. 

2* 



18 



thumb, whose tips he commonly held to- 
gether so as to form a circle. Where others 
applied but a few fingers he used his whole 
hand in the most uncouth and awkward 
manner imaginable. His gait, like that of 
an infant making its first essays in leading 
strings, was properly speaking not a walk but 
rather a waddling, tottering, groping of the 
way, — - a painful medium between the mo- 
tion of falling and the endeavor to stand up- 
right. In attempting to walk, instead of first 
treading firmly on his heel, he placed his 
heels and the balls of his feet at once to the 
ground, and raising both feet simultaneously 
with an inclination of the upper part of his 
body, he stumbled slowly and heavily for- 
ward, with out-stretched arms, which he 
seemed to use as balance poles. The slight- 
est impediment in his way caused him often, 
in his little chamber, to fall flat on the floor* 
For a long time after his arrival he could not 
go up or down stairs without assistance* 
And even now, it is still impossible for him 
to stand on one foot and to raise, to bend, or 
to stretch the other, without falling down. 
The following results of a medical examina- 



19 



tion of the body of Caspar Hauser, made by 
order of a court of justice in the year 1830, 
furnish us with the following highly inter- 
esting data which throw much light upon 
the circumstances of his life. 

" The knee," says Dr Osterhausen in his 
report, " exhibits a remarkable deviation from 
the usual formation. In the natural structure 
of the part, the patilla or kneepan forms a 
prominence anteriorly during the extension 
of the leg. But in Hauser it lay in a con- 
siderable depression. In a limb naturally 
formed, the four extensor muscles of the leg, 
the vastus externus and the vastus internus, 
the rectus femoris and the crureus are attach- 
ed by a common tendon to a protuberance 
of the tibia or shin bone, after having formed 
an intimate connexion with the kneepan. 
But in Hauser the tendon was divided ; and 
the two tendons of the external and internal 
vasti muscles proceeded separately down the 
leg to the puter and inner sides of the tuber- 
cle of the tibia, and were inserted below the 
tubercle into this bone. Between these two 
tendons lay the patilla. This unusual forma- 
tion of the part, together with a remarkable 



20 



developement of the two tendons, occasioned 
the depression in which the patilla was situ- 
ated. When Hauser sits down, with the 
thigh and leg extended horizontally on the 
floor, the back forms a right angle with the 
flexure of the thigh, and the knee joint lies 
extended so close to the floor that not the 
smallest hollow is perceptible in the ham. 
A common playing card could scarcely be 
thrust between the ham and the floor." 



CHAPTER III. 

The surprise occasioned by Caspar Hau- 
ser's first appearance soon settled down into 
the form of a dark and horrid enigma, to ex- 
plain which various conjectures were resorted 
to. By no means an ideot or a madman, he 
was so mild, so obedient and so good-natured, 
that no one could be tempted to regard this 
stranger as a savage, or as a child grown up 
among the wild beasts of the forest. And 
yet he was so entirely destitute of words and 
conceptions, he was so totally unacquainted 
with the most common objects and daily oc- 
currences of nature, and he showed so great 
an indifference, nay, such an abhorrence, to 
all the usual customs, conveniences, and 
necessaries of life ; and at the same time he 
evinced such extraordinary peculiarities in 
all the characteristics of his mental, moral 
and physical existence, as seemed to leave us 



22 



no other choice, than either to regard him as 
the inhabitant of some other planet, miracu- 
lously transferred to the earth, or as one who, 
(like the man whom Plato supposes) had been 
born and bred under ground, and who, now 
that he had arrived to the age of maturity, 
had for the first time ascended to the surface 
of the earth and beheld the light of the sun. 
Caspar showed continually the greatest 
aversion to all kinds of meat and drink, ex- 
cepting dry bread and water. Without swal- 
lowing or even tasting them, the very smell 
of most kinds of our common food was suf- 
ficient to make him shudder or to affect him 
still more disagreeably. The least drop of 
wine, of coffee, or the like, mixed clandes- 
tinely with his water, occasioned him cold 
sweats, or caused him to be seized with 
vomiting or violent headache. * 

* It is much to be regretted that in the whole 
city of Nuremberg not a single individual was to 
be found who possessed scientific curiosity sufficient 
to induce him to make this person the subject of 
physiological inquiries. Even the chemical analysis 
of the saliva, or other substances ejected by this 
young man, who had been solely fed on bread and 



23 



A certain person made, somewhere, the 
attempt to force some brandy upon him on 
pretence that it was water ; scarcely had the 
glass been brought to his lips, when he turn- 
ed pale, sunk down, and would have fallen 
backward against a glass door, if he had not 
been instantly supported. — Once when the 
prison keeper had prevailed upon him to 
take some coffee in his mouth, although he 
could scarcely have swallowed a single drop 
of it, his bowels were in consequence thereof 
repeatedly affected. — A few drops of beer 
made of malted wheat, though much di- 
luted with water, gave him a violent pain in 
his stomach, accompanied with so great a 
heat that he was all over dripping with per- 
spiration ; which was succeeded by an ague 
attended with headache and violent eructa- 

water, might alone have furnished many not unimpor- 
tant scientific results ; which results would at the same 
time have verified, as it were with intuitive certainty, 
the highly important juridical fact that Caspar had 
been really fed on nothing but bread and water. But 
at the time whjn the judicial authorities, after many 
fruitless endeavors on their part, were at length placed 
in a proper situation to engage in the examination of 
Hauser's case, every opportunity of making amends 
for what had been lost by such omissions had long 
passed by. 



24 



tions. — Even milk, whether boiled or fresh, 
was unpalatable to him, and caused him dis- 
gusting eructations. — Some meat was once 
concealed in his bread ; he smelt it imme- 
diately, and expressed a great aversion to 
it, but he was nevertheless prevailed upon to 
eat it ; and he felt afterwards extremely ill 
in consequence of having done so. During 
the night, which, with him, commenced re- 
gularly with the setting, and ended with the 
rising of the sun, he lay upon his straw bed ; 
in the day time he sat upon the floor with his 
legs stretched out straight before him. When 
in the first days, he saw for the first time a 
lighted candle placed before him he was de- 
lighted with the shining flame, and unsus- 
pectingly put his fingers into it ; but he soon 
drew it back, crying out and weeping. 
Feigned cuts and thrusts were made at him 
with a naked sabre, in order to try what might 
be their effect upon him ; but he remained 
immoveable, without even winking ; nor did 
he seem to harbor the least suspicion that 
any harm could thus be done to him.* 

* It is even said that by way of an amusing experi- 
ment, a pistol or some other piece of fire arms was 
once discharged at him. 



25 



When a looking glass was once held before 
him, he caught at his own reflected image, 
and then looked behind it to find the person 
whom he supposed to be concealed there. 
Like a little child, he endeavored to lay hold 
on every glittering object that he saw ; and 
when he could not reach it, or when he was 
forbidden to touch it, he cried. Some days 
after his arrival, Caspar was conducted, un- 
der the escort of two police men, around the 
city, in order to discover whether he could 
recognise the gate through which he had en- 
tered. But, as might have been foreseen, 
he knew not how to distinguish the one from 
the other; and, upon the whole, he appeared 
to take no notice whatsoever of what was 
passing before his eyes. When objects were 
brought more than ordinarily near to him, 
he gazed at them with a stupid look, which, 
only in particular instances, was expressive 
of curiosity and astonishment. He was in 
possession .of only two words which he oc- 
casionally used for the purpose of designating 
living creatures. Whatever appeared to him 
in a human form he called, without any dis- 
tinction of sex or age, " bua ;" and to every 
3 



26 



animal that he met with, whether quadruped 
or biped, dog, cat, goose, or fowl, he gave 
the name of " ross" (horse.) If such horses 
were white he appeared to be pleased ; black 
animals were regarded by him with aversion 
and fear. A black hen, advancing towards 
him, once put him in great fear ; he cried 
out, and, though his feet refused to perform 
their office, he made every effort to run 
away from her. 

Not only his mind but many of his senses 
appeared at first to be in a state of torpor, 
and only gradually to open to the perception 
of external objects. It was not before the 
Ispse of several days that he hegan to notice 
the striking of the steeple clock, and the 
ringing of the bells. This threw him into 
the greatest astonishment, which at first was 
expressed only by his listening looks and by 
certain spasmodic motions of his countenance ; 
but it was soon succeeded by a stare of 
benumbed meditation. Some weeks after- 
wards the nuptial procession of a peasant 
passed by the tower with a band of music 
close under his window. He suddenly stood 
listening, motionless as a statue ; his counten- 



27 



ance appeared to be transfigured, and his 
eyes as it were to radiate his ecstasy ; his 
ears and eyes seemed continually to follow 
the movements of the sounds as they reced- 
ed more and more ; and they had long 
ceased to be audible, while he still continued 
immovably fixed in a listening posture, as if 
unwilling to lose the last vibrations of these, 
to him, celestial notes, or as if his soul had 
followed them and left its body behind it, in 
torpid insensibility. Certainly not by way 
of making any very judicious trial of Caspar's 
musical taste, this being, whose extraordinary 
nervous excitability was already sufficiently 
apparent, was once, at a military parade, 
placed very near to the great regimental 
drum. He was so powerfully affected by 
its first sounds, as to be immediately thrown 
into convulsions, which rendered his instanta- 
neous removal necessary. 

Among the many remarkable phenomena 
which appeared in Caspar's conduct, it was 
soon observed that the idea of horses and 
particularly of wooden horses, was one which 
in his eyes must have acquired no small de- 
gree of importance. The word " Ross'* 



28 



(horse) appeared in his dictionary, which 
contained scarcely half a dozen words, to 
fill the greatest space. This word he pro- 
nounced on the most diverse occasions, more 
frequently than any other, and often indeed 
with tears in his eyes, and with a plaintive, 
beseeching tone of voice, which seemed to 
express a longing for some particular horse. 
Whenever any trifle, as for instance a glitter- 
ing coin, a ribbon, a little picture, &c, was 
given him, he cried : " Ross ! Ross !" and 
notified by his looks and motions his wish to 
hang all these pretty things upon a horse. 
Caspar, who — not indeed to any great advan- 
tage of his mental development, or to the 
making of such accurate observations on his 
peculiarities as the rarity of such a phe- 
nomenon rendered desirable — was daily con- 
ducted to the guard room of the police, be- 
came there as it were domesticated, and 
gained the good will and affection of all its 
constant attendants. The words " Ross ! 
Ross ! " which, also here, he so often repeat- 
ed, suggested to one of the police soldiers, 
who had always taken the most notice of this 
singular amalgamation of adolescence and 



29 



childhood, the idea of bringing him, at the 
guard room, a toy of a wooden horse. Cas- 
par, who had hitherto on almost all occasions 
showed the greatest insensibility and indiffer- 
ence, and who generally seemed much de- 
jected, appeared now to be as it were sud- 
denly transformed, and conducted himself as 
if he had found in this little horse an old 
and long desired friend. Without noisy 
demonstrations of joy, but with a counte- 
nance smiling in his tears, he immediately 
seated himself on the floor by the side of 
the horse, stroked it, patted it, kept his eyes 
immovably fixed upon it, and endeavored to 
hang upon it all the variegated, glittering and 
tinkling trifles which the benevolence of 
those about him had presented to him. Only 
now that he could decorate his little horse 
with them, all these things appeared to have 
acquired their true value. When the hour 
arrived when he was to leave the police 
guard room, he endeavored to lift up the 
horse, in order to take it along with him ; and 
he wept bitterly when he found that his arms 
and legs were so weak that he could not lift 
3* 



30 



his favorite over the threshold of the door.* 
Whenever he afterwards returned to the 
guard room, he immediately placed himself 
on the floor by the side of his dear little 
horse, without paying the least attention to 
the people who were about him. " For hours 
together," said one of the police soldiers in 
the declaration which he afterwards made 
before the police court, " Caspar sat playing 
with his horse by the side of the stove, with- 
out attending in the least to anything that 
passed around him or by his side." 

But also in the tower, in his small cham- 
ber and sitting room, he was soon supplied 
not only with one but with several horses. 
These horses were henceforward, whenever 
he was at home, his constant companions 
and playmates, which he never suffered to 
be removed from his side, of which he 
never lost sight, and with which — as could 

* He was for a long time afterwards, extremely 
weak in his arms as well as in his feet. It was not 
before the month of September, 1828, after he had 
already commenced to eat meat, that his strength was, 
by continued exercise, so far increased, as to enable 
him to lift a weight of twentyfive pounds with both 
his hands a little way from the ground. 



31 



be observed through a concealed opening 
made in the door — he continually employed 
himself. Every day, every hour resembled 
the other in this, that all of them were 
passed by Caspar sitting on the floor by the 
side of his horses, with his legs stretched 
out before him, and continually employed in 
ornamenting them one way or another, with 
ribbons and strings, or with bits of colored 
paper, sometimes bedecking them with coins, 
bells, and spangles, and sometimes appearing 
to be immersed in the thought how this de- 
coration might be varied by successively 
placing these articles in different positions. 
He also often dragged his horses backwards 
and forwards by his side, without changing 
his place or altering his position ; yet this 
was done silently and very carefully, for fear, 
as he afterwards said, that the rolling of the 
wheels might make a noise and he might be 
beaten for it. He never ate his bread with- 
out first holding every morsel of it to the 
mouth of some one of his horses ; nor did 
he ever drink water without first dipping 
their mouths in it, which he afterwards care- 
fully wiped off. One of these horses was of 



32 



plaster, and its mouth was consequently very 
soon softened. He could not conceive how 
this happened ; because he perceived that 
the mouths of his other horses, although 
they also were immersed in water, remained 
unaltered. The prison keeper, to whom 
with tears in his eyes he showed the misfor- 
tune that had befallen his plaster horse, com- 
forted him by insinuating that " this horse did 
not like to drink water." In consequence 
of this information he ceased to water it, as 
he believed that the horse, by this visible 
deformity of his mouth, indicated his dislike 
to water. The prison keeper, who saw 
what pains Caspar took to feed his horses 
with his bread, endeavored to make him un- 
derstand that these horses could not eat. — 
But Caspar thought he had sufficiently re- 
futed him by pointing to the crumbs which 
stuck in their mouths. — One of his horses 
had a bridle in its mouth which was wide 
open ; hence he also made a bridle of gold 
spangles joined together for his other horse j 
and he took great pains to induce it to open 
its mouth and to let him place the bridle 
into it, — an attempt in which he persisted, 



33 



for two whole days with unwearied persever- 
ance. Having once fallen asleep on a rock- 
ing horse, he fell down and squeezed his 
finger ; upon which he complained that the 
horse had bitten him. — As he was once 
dragging one of his horses over the floor, its 
hind feet having got into a hole, it reared up. 
At this occurrence he expressed the most 
lively satisfaction ; he afterwards frequently 
repeated a spectacle which appeared to him 
so very remarkable, and he treated all his 
visitors to a sight of it. When the prison 
keeper aftenvards expressed his displeasure 
at his always showing the same thing to 
every body, he ceased indeed to do so; but 
he cried at his being no longer permitted to 
show his rearing horse. Once, when, in 
rearing, this horse fell down, he ran to it with 
precipitate tenderness, and expressed his 
sorrow that it had hurt itself. But he was 
quite inconsolable, when the prison keeper 
once drove' a nail into one of his horses. 

From this, as well as from many other 
circumstances, it may well be supposed, and 
it afterwards proved to be quite certain, that, 
in his infantine soul, ideas of things animate or 



34 



inanimate, organic or unorganized, or of what 
is produced by nature or formed by art, were 
still strangely mingled together. 

He distinguished animals from men only 
by their form, as men from women only by 
their dress ; and the clothing of the female 
sex was, on account of its varied and striking 
colors, far more pleasing to him than that of 
males ; on which account he afterwards also 
frequently expressed his desire to become a 
girl ; that is, to wear female apparel. That 
children should become grown people, was 
quite inconceivable to him ; and he was par- 
ticularly obstinate in denying this fact, when 
he was told that he himself had once been a 
little child, and that he would probably grow 
much taller than he then was. Nor was he 
convinced of its truth, until some months 
afterwards, when repeated trials, made by 
marking his measure upon the wall, proved to 
him by experience the fact of his own and 
indeed very rapid growth. 

Not a spark of religion, not the smallest 
particle of any dogmatic system was to be 
found in his soul ; how great soever the ill 
timed pains might be which, immediately or 



35 



in the first week after his arrival, were taken 
by several clergymen to seek for and to 
awaken them. Indeed, no animal could have 
shown itself more unable to comprehend, or 
to form any conception of what they meant 
by all their questions, discourses and sermons, 
than Caspar. All the religion that he brought 
with him, (if the name may without scandal be 
thus misapplied,) was that, with which the 
stupid piety of devout villains had furnished 
his pockets, at his first exposure in Nurem- 
berg. 

It may perhaps not be uninteresting, to 
hear the observations made on Caspar's con- 
duct and demeanor, during his abode in the 
tower, by a plain but sensible man, the prison 
keeper Hiltel, who had the care of him for 
several weeks. His declaration contained 
in the protocol, as far as it relates to this 
subject, is to the following effect : " Soon 
after I had for some time silently observed 
the pretended Caspar Hauser, I was fully 
convinced that he was by no means an idiot 
or one who had been neglected by nature, 
but that he must in some inconceivable man- 
ner have been deprived of all means of culti- 



36 



vating and developing his mind. To relate 
all the innumerable proofs of this which are 
contained in various phenomena that I have 
observed in Hauser's conduct, would extend 
my narration to too great a length. During 
the first days of his abode with me, his con- 
duct was precisely that of a little child, and 
displayed in every respect nothing but nature 
and innocence. On the fourth or fifth day, 
he was removed from the upper and more 
closely confined part of the tower prison to 
the lower story, in which I lived with my 
family, and he was lodged in a small cham- 
ber, which was so arranged, that I could 
constantly observe his movements, without 
his being able to perceive it. Here 1 have, 
in obedience to the orders given me by the 
burghermaster, frequently noticed his con- 
duct when he was alone ; and I have always 
found it to be perfectly uniform. He amused 
himself, when alone, with his playthings, in 
the same natural and unaffected manner as 
when he was in my presence. For, in the 
beginning, when he was once fully occupied 
with his playthings, it was of no consequence 
whatsoever what else occurred around him j 



37 



for he took not the slightest notice of it. I 
must however remark, that the pleasure which 
he thus took in childish playthings, did not 
continue very long. When once his mind 
had been directed to more serious and more 
useful occupations, and had become accus- 
tomed to them, he no longer took delight in 
playing. His whole demeanor was, so to 
speak, a perfect mkror of childlike innocence. 
There was nothing deceitful in him ; his ex- 
pressions exactly corresponded with the dic- 
tates of his heart, that is, as far as the poverty 
of his language would admit of it. When 
once my wife and myself undressed him, in 
order to cleanse his body, he gave full 
proof of his innocence and ignorance ; his 
conduct, on that occasion, was precisely that 
of a child; quite natural and unembarrassed.* 

* Not long afterwards, however, a feeling of modesty- 
was awakened in him ; and he then became as bashful 
as the most chaste and delicate maiden. An exposure 
of his person.he now regards with horror. After the 
wild Brazilian girl Isabella, whom Messrs Spix and 
Martins had brought to Munchen, had lived for 
some time among civilized people and worn clothes, 
it was not without much trouble, nor yet without 
threats and blows, that she could be brought to undress 
herself that her shape might be drawn by an artist. 
4 



38 



After he had got his playthings, and after 
other persons had been admitted to him, I 
sometimes permitted my son Julius, who is 
eleven years old, to go to see him. He as 
it were taught him to speak, showed him 
how to form his letters, and communicated to 
him such conceptions as he himself possessed. 
I also sometimes permitted my daughter 
Margaret, a little girl of three years old, to go 
into his room. He at first, took great delight 
in playing with her, and she taught him to 
string glass beads. This amusement ceased 
to give him satisfaction, as soon as he be- 
gan to grow tired of inanimate playthings. 
During the latter part of his abode with me, 
he derived his greatest pleasure and amuse- 
ment from drawings and copperplates, which 
he stuck to the walls of his chamber." 






CHAPTER IV. 

In a very few days after his first arrival, 
Caspar was no longer considered in the tower 
as a prisoner, but as a forsaken and neglected 
child, who needed to be cared for and edu- 
cated. The prison keeper admitted him to 
his family table, where, although he would 
not partake of any food, yet he learned to 
sit in a proper manner, to use his hands as a 
human being and to become acquainted with 
and to imitate many of the customs of civil- 
ized life. Most willingly did he play with the 
children of the keeper ; who, on their part, 
were by no means disinclined to amuse them- 
selves with this good-natured youth, whose 
excessive ignorance was diverting, even to 
children. But particularly Julius, who was 
eleven years old, became greatly attached to 
Caspar, and felt his incipient vanity not a 
little flattered by the occupation of teaching 



40 



this robust youth, around whose chin the first 
rudiments of a beard had already begun to 
sprout — how to speak. Curiosity soon 
brought, every day and even every hour, 
multitudes of people around him, of whom 
few were willing to content themselves with 
merely gazing at the tame savage. Most of 
them found some means of busying them- 
selves with him in one way or another. Some 
indeed, regarded him only as an object of 
amusement, or of experiments by no means 
scientifical. Yet, there were many who con- 
versed with him rationally, and who endea- 
vored to awaken his mind to a communica- 
tion of ideas. One pronounced Words and 
phrases which he made him repeat, another 
strove by signs and gestures to make unknown 
things known, and unintelligible things intelli- 
gible to him. Everything, even every play- 
thing, by the gift of which the kind inhabi- 
tants of Nuremberg expressed their good 
will and attention to the poor youth, supplied 
him with new materials of thought, and tended 
to increase the wealth of his mind, with the 
acquisition of new conceptions and with the 
knowledge of significant sounds. Yet the 



41 



principal advantage which accrued to him 
from this frequent intercourse with human 
beings, was its tendency to awaken his mind 
more and more to attention, to reflection and 
to active thought, accordingly as his self con- 
sciousness became more clear. This, again, 
rendered the want of communicating his 
thoughts to others daily more perceptible to 
him ; and thus, the instinctively operative 
and inventive teacher of languages within 
him, was continually kept actively employed. 
About a fortnight after Caspar's arrival in 
Nuremberg, he was most providentially fa- 
vored with a visit from the worthy professor 
Daumer, an intelligent young scholar, who in 
the kindly feelings of his humane heart dis- 
covered a peculiar vocation, to devote him- 
self to the mental development, education 
and instruction of this unfortunate youth, — 
as far as the eager importunity of curious 
visitors and other impediments and interrup- 
tions permitted him to do so. Caspar would 
not have possessed so active a mind, so fer- 
vent a zeal to lay hold on everything that 
was new to him, so vivid, so youthfully pow- 
erful, and so faithfully retentive a memory, 
4* 



42 



as, to the astonishment of all, he evinced, if? 
with such assistance, he had not very soon 
learned to speak, sufficiently, at least, in 
some degree to express his thoughts. Yet, 
his first attempts to speak remained for a long 
time a mere chopping of words, so miserably 
defective and so awkwardly helpless, that it 
was seldom possible to ascertain, wittrany 
certainty, what he meant to express by the 
fragments of speech which he jumbled to- 
gether. Continuity of speech or consistency 
of narration, was by iio means to be expect- 
ed from him ; and much was always left to 
be supplied by the conjectures of the hearer* 
To the burgermaster, Mr Binder, Caspar 
was not only an object of deep irlterest, in as 
far as his humane feeilngs were concerned, 
but he claimed his particular attention in the 
performance of his official duties as the head 
of the police ; and to this most extraordinary 
subject of police inquiry he devoted a very 
large portion of his time and attention. It 
was indeed sufficiently apparent, that the? 
every-day forms of official business were ill 
adapted to this, by no means every-day oc- 



43 



Cunetice ; # and that formal official inquiries 
and examinations could not be expected to 
throw any light whatsoever upon this mys- 
tery. Mr Binder therefore very properly 
chose, in the present case, to avoid the em- 
barrassing restrictions of legal forms, by means 
of extra-official proceedings. He caused 
Caspar, almost every day, to be brought td 
his house, and made him feel, as it were, at 
home in his family. He conversed with him, 
and made him talk as well as he could ; and 
thus he endeavored, by frequently ques- 
tioning and cross-questioning him to obtain 
gome information concerning the events of 
his life, and his arrival. It was in this 
manner, that Mr Binder at length succeed- 
ed, or thought that he had succeeded, in 
Extracting from isolated answers and expres- 
sions of Caspar, the materials of a histo- 
ry, which was, already, on the seventh of 

* But then, the rash attempt ought not afterwards 
to have been made, to give, at a later period, to trans- 
actions which were only of a private nature, the ap- 
parent form of official inquiries ; which gives to the 
public documents appertaining to this case a very sin- 
gular appearance. 



44 



July the same year, given to the public, in 
the form of an official promulgation.* This 
promulgation — if we may call it so — - con- 
tains indeed, in many of its minute details, 
which have too confidently been given with 
unnecessary prolixity, much that is incredi- 
ble and contradictory. Nor is it an easy 
matter to discriminate, in every particular in- 
stance, between what really appertains to the 
person questioned, and what in fact belongs 
to those who questioned him ; — between 
what really flowed from Caspar's obscure re- 
collections, and what, by dint of repeated 
questions, may have been insinuated into his 
mind, in such a manner, as to have been in- 
voluntarily confounded by him with things 
actually stored up in his memory. Many 
incidents mentioned, may have been supplied, 
or may at least have received a finish, from 
the conjectures of others ; and the introduc- 
tion of many, may even be owing to miscon- 
ceptions, resulting from the impossibility of 
always understanding what was meant by the 

* It is this promulgation, which has hitherto served 
for the foundation, upon which all accounts that have 
hitherto been given of Caspar in journals and pamphlets 
have been made to rest. 



45 



expressions of a half dumb human animal, so 
very destitute, as Caspar was at that time, of 
distinct conceptions of the most common ob- 
jects and every-day occurrences of nature 
and of life. Yet, upon the whole, that is, 
as far as the principal and most essential facts 
which it relates are concerned, this historical 
narrative agrees perfectly with the contents 
of a written memoir, which was afterwards 
composed by Hauser himself, and sworn to 
by him, before a court of justice, held for the 
purpose of inquiring into this affair, in 1829 ; 
as it also agrees, with what he has, on differ- 
ent occasions, invariably related to the author 
and to many other persons, precisely to the 
same effect. The account which he gave 
was as follows: 

" He neither knows who he is, nor where 
his home is. It was only at Nuremburg that 
he came into the world.* Here he first 
learnt that, besides himself and , c the man 
with whom he had always been, 5 there ex- 

* An expression which he often uses to designate 
his exposure in Nuremburg, and his first awakening 
to the consciousness of mental life. 



46 



isted other men and other creatures. As 
long as he can recollect he had always 
lived in a hole, (a small low apartment 
which he sometimes calls a cage,) where 
he had always sat upon the ground, with 
bare feet, and clothed only with a shirt 
and a pair of breeches."* In his apart- 
ment he never heard a sound, whether pro- 
duced by a man, by an animal, or by any- 
thing else. He never saw the heavens, nor 
did there ever appear a brightening (day- 
light) such as at Nuremberg. He never per- 
ceived any difference between day and night, 
and much less did he ever get a sight of the 
beautiful lights in the heavens. When- 

* According to a more particular account given by 
Caspar — which is fully confirmed by marks upon his 
body which cannot be mistaken, by the singular forma- 
tion of his knee and knee hollow, and by his peculiar 
mode of sitting upon the ground with his legs extend- 
ed which is possible to himself alone, — he never, 
even in his sleep, lay with his whole body stretched 
out, but sat, waking and sleeping, with his back sup- 
ported in an erect posture. Some peculiar property 
of his place of rest, and some particular contrivance 
must probably have made it necessary for him to re- 
main constantly in su ch a position. He is himself un- 
able to give any further information upon this sub- 
ject. 



47 



ever he awoke from sleep, he found a loaf 
of bread and a pitcher of water by him. 
Sometimes this water had a bad taste ; when- 
ever this was the ease, he could no longer 
keep his eyes open, but was compelled to 
fall asleep ; # and, when he afterwards awoke, 
he found that he had a clean shirt on, and 
that his nails had been cut.f He never saw 
the face of the man who brought him his 

* That this water was mixed with opium may well 
be supposed ; and, the certainty, that this was really 
the fact, was fully proved on the following occasion. 
After he had for some time lived with Professor Dau- 
mer, his physician attempted to administer to him a 
drop of opium in a glass of water. Caspar had scarcely 
swallowed the first mouthful of this water, when he 
said : " that water is nasty ; it tastes exactly like the 
water I was sometimes obliged to drink in my cage." 

t Hence, as well as from other circumstances, it is 
evident, that Caspar was during his incarceration al- 
ways treated with a certain degree of careful attention. 
And this accounts for the attachment which he long 
retained to the man " with whom he had always been." 
This attachment ceased only at a very late period ; 
yet, never to such a degree as to make him wish that 
this man should be punished. He wished that those 
should be punished by whose orders he had been con- 
fined ; but he said, that that man had done him no 
harm. 



48 



meat and drink. In his hole he had two 
wooden horses and several ribbons* With 
these horses he had always amused himself 
as long as he was awake ; and his only oc- 
cupation was, to make them run by his side 
and to fix or tie the ribbons about them in 
different positions. Thus, one day had 
passed as the other ; but he had never felt 
the want of anything, had never been sick, 
and — once only excepted — had never 
felt the sensation of pain. Upon the whole, 
he had been much happier there than in the 
world, where he was obliged to suffer so 
much. How long he had continued to live 
in this situation he knew not ; for he had had 
no knowledge of time. He knew not when, 
or how he came there. Nor had he any 
recollection of ever having been in a differ- 
ent situation, or in any other than in that 
place. The man with whom he had always 
been, never did him any harm. Yet one 
day, shortly before he was taken away, — 
when he had been running his horse too 
hard, and had made too much noise, the man 
came and struck him upon his arm with a 
stick, or with a piece of wood ; this caused 



49 



the wound which he brought with him to 
Nuremberg." 

" Pretty nearly about the same time, the 
man once came into his prison, placed a small 
table over his feet, and spread something white 
upon it, which he now knows to have been 
paper ; he then came behind him, so as not 
to be seen by him, took hold of his hand, 
and moved it backwards and forwards on the 
paper, with a thing (a lead pencil) which he 
had stuck between his fingers. He (Hau- 
ser) was then ignorant of what it was ; but 
he was mightily pleased, when he saw the 
black figures which began to appear upon 
the white paper. When he felt that his hand 
was free, and the man was gone from him, 
he was so much pleased with this new dis- 
covery, that he could never grow tired of 
drawing these figures repeatedly upon the 
paper. This occupation almost made him 
neglect his horses, although he did not know 
what those characters signified. The man 
repeated his visits in the same manner several 
times. "* 

* Of the fact that Caspar really had had instruction 
and indeed regular elementary instruction in writing 
5 



50 



"- Another time the man came again, lifted 
him from the place where he lay, placed him 

he gave evident proofs, immediately on the first morn- 
ing after his arrival in Nuremberg. When the prison 
keeper Hiltel came to him that morning, in the prison, 
he gave him, in order to employ or to amuse him, & 
sheet of paper with a lead pencil. Caspar seized 
eagerly on both, placed the paper upon the bench and 
began and continued to write, without intermission, 
and without ever looking up or suffering himself to* 
be disturbed by anything that passed, until he had 
filled the whole folio sheet, on all four sides, with his 
writing. The appearance of this sheet, which has 
been preserved and affixed to the documents furnished 
by the police, is much the same as if Caspar, who* 
nevertheless wrote from memory, had had a copy ly- 
ing before him, such as are commonly set before 
children when they are first taught to write. For, 
the writing upon this sheet consisted of rows of letters, 
or rows of syllables ; so that, almost everywhere, the 
same letter or the same syllable is constantly repeat- 
ed. At the bottom of each page, all the letters of the 
alphabet are also placed together, in the same order in 
which they actually succeed each other, as is com- 
monly the case in copies given to children ; and, in 
another line, the numerical cyphers are placed, from 
1 to 0, in their proper order. On one page of this 
sheet, the name " Kaspar Hauser " is constantly re- 
peated ; and, on the same sheet, the word reider 
(Reuter, rider,) frequently occurs, yet this sheet also 
proves, that Caspar had not progressed beyond the 
first elements of writing. 



51 



on his feet, and endeavored to teach him to 
stand. This he repeated at several different 
times. The manner in which he effected 
this, was the following : he seized him firmly 
around the breast, from behind ; placed his 
feet behind Caspar's feet, and lifted these, 
as in stepping forward." 

" Finally, the man appeared once again, 
placed Caspar's hands over his shoulders, 
tied them fast, and thus, carried him on his 
back out of the prison. He was carried up 
(or down) a hill.* He knows not how he 
felt; all became night, and he was laid upon 
his back." This " becoming night," as ap- 
peared on many different occasions at Nu- 
remberg signified, in Caspar's language, " to 
faint away." The account given of the con- 
tinuation of his journey, is principally con- 

* It is evident, and other circumstances prove it to 
be a fact, that Caspar could not yet, at that time, dis- 
tinguish the motion of ascending from that of descend- 
ing, or height from depth, even as to the impressions 
made upon nis own feelings ; and that he was conse- 
quently still less able to designate this difference cor- 
rectly by means of words. What Caspar calls a hill, 
must in all probability have been a pair of stairs. Cas- 
par also thinks he can recollect, that in being carried 
he brushed against something by his side. 



52 



fined to the following particulars : " that he 
had often lain with his face to the ground, in 
which cases it became night ; that he had 
several times eaten bread and drunk water ; 
that the man, " with whom he had always 
been," had often taken pains to teach him to 
walk, which always gave him great pain, &c." 
This man never spoke to him ; excepting, 
that he continually repeated to him the words 
" Renta wahn," &c* He (Caspar) never 
saw the face of the man either on this journey 
or ever before in prison. Whenever he led 
him, he directed him to look down upon the 
ground and at his feet, — an injunction which 
he always strictly obeyed ; partly from fear, 
and partly because his attention was suffi- 
ciently occupied with his own person and the 
position of his feet. Not long before he was 
observed at Nuremberg, the man had put 
the clothes upon him which he then wore. 

The putting on of his boots gave him great 
pain ; for the man made him sit on the ground, 
seized him from behind, drew his feet up, 
and thus forced them into the boots. They 

* This jargon seems to imply M I will be a rider (a 
trooper) as my father was." 



53 



then proceed onwards still more miserably 
than before. He neither then, nor ever be- 
fore, perceived anything of the objects around 
him ; he neither observed nor saw them ; 
and he could therefore not tell from what 
part of the country, in what direction, or by 
what road he came. All that he wa s con- 
sciousof, was that the man whohad been lead- 
ing him put the letter which he had brought 
with him into his hand, and then vanished ; 
after which, a citizen observed him and took 
him to the guard-room at the new gate. 
This history of the mysterious imprison- 
ment and exposure of a young man, pre- 
sents, not only a fearful, but a most singular 
and obscure enigma ; which may indeed give 
rise to innumerable questions and conjectures, 
but, in respect to which, little can be said 
with certainty ; and which, until its solution 
shall have been found, must continue to re- 
tain, in common with all enigmas, the pro- 
perty of being enigmatical. Caspar's mental 
condition during his dungeon life, must have 
been that of a human being, immersed, in 
his infancy, in a profound sleep, in which 
he was not conscious even of a dream, or at 
5* 



54 



fe^st bf ally succession of dreams. He had 
continued in this stupor, until, afrighted with 
pain and apprehensions, he suddenly awoke, 
stunned with the wild and confused noises 
and the unintelligible impressions of a varie- 
gated world, without knowing what had hap- 
pened. Whoever should expect, that such a 
being, when arrived at a full state of conscious-* 
ness, should be able to give a perfectly clear* 
and circumstantial historical description of 
his slumbers and his dreams, which should 
satisfy the understanding, so as to remove 
every doubt, would expect nothing less, than 
that a sleeper should sleeping have beer* 
awake, or that a waking person should while 
awake, have slept 

There still exist Certain regions in Ger- 
many, to which, if a second Dupin were to 
furnish maps depicting the illumination of the 
human mind in different countries, he would 
give a coloring of dark gray, where occur- 
rences similar to those which Hauser has 
delated, are by no means unheard of. Dr 
Horn* for instance, saw in the infirmary at 

* In his travels through Germany. (See Gotting-' 
s'che gelehrte Anzeige. July, 1831. p. 1097.) 



53 



j§alzbui*g, but a few years ago, a girl of twenty* 
two years of age and by no means ugly, who 
bad been brought up in a hogstye among the 
hogs, and who had sat there for many years 
with her legs crossed. One of her legs was 
quite crooked, she grunted like a hog, and 
her gestures werd brutishly unseemly in a 
human dress. In comparison with such 
abominations, the crimes committed against 
Caspar Hauser may even be considered as 
acts in which the forbearance of humanity is 
still visible. That Caspar should be unable 
to give any account of the mode and manner 
in which he was conveyed to Nuremberg, 
or to furnish any recitals or descriptions of 
the adventures of his journey, of the places 
through which he passed, or of any of the 
usual occurrences which strike the attention 
of travellers, whatever may be their mode of 
conveyance, is so far from being astonishing, 
that the case could not have been otherwise 
without the intervention of a miracle. Even 
if Caspar had before he left his prison awoke 
to a state of clear and rational self-conscious- 
ness ; if, like Sigismund in his tower, he had 
by means of education and the cultivation of 



56 



his mind attained to the maturity of a young 
man; yet, the sudden transition from the 
close confinement and gloomy obscurity of 
his dungeon, could not have failed to throw 
him either into fainting fits or into a state very 
similar to that of excessive intoxication. 
The unwonted impressions made by the ex- 
ternal air must have stunned him, and the 
bright sun-light blinded his eyes. Yet even 
with seeing and unblinded eyes, he would 
have seen nothing ; — at least he would have 
observed and taken cognizance of nothing. 
For nature, with all her phenomena, must 
at that time have shone before his eyes, with 
the glare of one confusedly diversified and 
checkered mass, in which no single object 
could be distinguished from another. That 
this was really the case, even at Nuremberg, 
was, as we shall see hereafter, confirmed in 
the most unequivocal manner by actual ex- 
perience. From what part of the country was 
Caspar brought? upon what road, and through 
which gate did he arrive ? was his journey 
performed on foot, or in a carriage or a wag- 
on ? To these and to similar questions, the 
answers, even if they could be given with 



57 



perfect certainty, would be such as would 
interest rather the judge, who might be called 
upon to examine and to decide, than the 
public. Caspar himself, remembers only 
his having walked ; without, however, being 
able to add anything, which might ; lead to 
probable conjectures concerning the time 
consumed, or the length of the way passed 
over, in walking. That he has no recollec- 
tion of having rode in a carriage or wagon, 
does not however prove that he may not 
nevertheless, and perhaps for the greater part 
of the way, have been thus conveyed. Cas- 
par, sinks, even yet, whenever he rides in a 
carriage or a wagon, into a kind of death 
sleep, from which he does not easily awake, 
whether the vehicle stops or rolls on ; and 
in this state, how roughly soever it may be 
done, he may be lifted up or laid down, and 
packed or unpacked without his having the 
least perception of it. When sleep has once 
laid hold of him, no noise, no sound, no re- 
port, no thunder is loud enough to wake him. 
If Caspar — which from his own account ap- 
pears probable — fainted away whenever he 
was brought into the open air, if his eon- 



58 



ductors, for the sake of greater security, 
made him drink some of the ill-tasted water 
(opium diluted with water) ; they may, with 
the greatest safety, have thrown him into a 
wagon, and driven him many a day's journey, 
without any fear of his awakening, crying out, 
or occasioning his kidnappers the least in- 
convenience. Mr Schmidt of Lubeck, has, 
in his book Uber Kaspar Hauser (Altona, 
1831,) given many ingenious reasons for his 
conjecture, that Caspar was brought to Nu- 
remberg from some place in its immediate 
vicinity. For this, as well as for other con- 
jectures, this history leaves ample room. 
That the person by whom Caspar was brought 
to Nuremberg, must have been one who was 
well acquainted with Nuremberg and its lo- 
cality, is certain ; and, that he must in former 
times have served as a soldier in one of the 
regiments stationed there, is at least highly 
probable* 

The crimes committed against Caspar 
Hauser, as far as the information hitherto 
given of them extends, are, judging accord- 
ing to the criminal code of Bavaria, the fol- 
lowing : 



59 



1. The crime of illegal imprisonment: 
{Strafgesetzbuch Thl. 1 Art. 192-695) which 
was doubly aggravated, first, in respect to the 
duration of the imprisonment, which appears 
to have lasted from his earliest infancy to the 
age of early manhood ; and secondly, in re- 
spect to its kind, inasmuch as it was con- 
nected with particular instances of ill-treat- 
ment. As such, we must consider, not only 
the brutish den and crippling position to which 
he was confined, and his coarse diet, which 
would scarcely have satisfied a dog, but we 
must incontestably and indeed principally re- 
gard as such, the cruel withholding from him, 
of the most ordinary donations, which nature 
with a liberal hand extends even to the most 
indigent ; — the depriving him of all the 
means of mental development and culture, 
— the unnatural detention of a human soul 
in a state of irrational animality. With this 
crime concurs, objectively — 

II. The .crime of exposure; which, ac- 
cording to Stgb. Thl. l,art. 174, may be com- 
mitted not only in regard to infants, but also 
in regard to grown up persons whom sickness 
or other infirmities render unable to help 



60 



themselves ; among which class of persons, 
Caspar, on account of the state of animal stu- 
pidity and of inability to see with his eyes 
open or even to walk in an upright position 
with safety, in which he then was, must un- 
doubtedly be reckoned. The crime of Cas- 
par's exposition is also aggravated by the con- 
sideration of the danger to which it exposed 
his life. His situation, both in respect to his 
mind and his body, exposed him evidently 
to the danger, either of falling into the river 
Pzegnitz which was very near to the place 
of his exposure, or of being run down by 
carriages or horses. If a particular crime, af- 
fecting the mental powers, or, as it might more 
properly be designated, affecting the life of a 
human soul, were known to the criminal code 
of Bavaria ; this crime would, in forming a 
juridical estimate of this case, when com- 
pared with the crime of illegal imprisonment, 
assume the place of the highest importance ; 
nay, the latter crime would vanish in com- 
parison with the first, as infinitely the greater 
of the two, and it would be absorbed by it.* 

* The conception that a crime may be absorbed by 
the commission of a greater crime, is familiar to Ger- 



61 



The deprivation of external liberty, though 
in itself an irreparable injury, bears yet no 
comparison with the injury done to this un- 
happy being, by depriving him of the incalcu- 
lable sum of inestimable benefits which can 
never be restored to him, and which, by the 
robbery committed upon his freedom, and 
the mode and manner in which it was com- 
mitted, were either entirely withdrawn from 
him, or destroyed, and his means of enjoying 
them miserably crippled for the remainder of 
his life. Such a crime does not merely af- 
fect the external corporeal appearance of 
man, but the inmost essence of his spiritual 
being; it is the iniquity of a murderous rob- 
bery perpetrated upon the very sanctuary of 
his rational nature. When some authors 

man writers on criminal jurisprudence. If a person 
found guilty of petty larceny, were also found guilty 
of murder, it is evident, that the punishment of death 
incurred by the second crime, would render it im- 
possible to inflict the punishment of imprisonment in- 
curred by the first ; which, by suspending his execu- 
tion, would act rather as a reprieve than as a punish- 
ment. The first crime would therefore remain un- 
punished ; its punishment being as it were absorbed 
by the punishment of the second crime. 
6 



62 



designate such a crime merely by the predi- 
cate of a robbery of the intellect, (noochiria), 
as Tittmann,* and make that which consti- 
tutes the essential condition of its existence, 
to consist in actually effecting a deprivation 
of intellect, or in causing insanity ; Caspar 
Hauser's case furnishes an instance, which 
may convince them, that their conception of 
this crime is far too limited, and, that a legis- 
lator who should desire to render his system 
more complete, by the exhibition of such a 
genus of crimes, ought to assume a more 
elevated and more extensive point of view. 
The confinement which Caspar suffered in 
his infancy, produced neither idiocy nor in- 
sanity ; for, since the recovery of his liberty, 
as we shall see more particularly hereafter, 
he has emerged from the state of mere ani- 
mality ; his mind has been developed, and 
he may now, with certain limitations, be con- 
sidered as a rational, intelligent, civilized and 
moral man. Yet no one can help perceiving, 
that it is the criminal invasion of the life of 

* Handbuch der Strafrechtswissenschaft. Thl. 1, 
§179. 



63 



his soul, — that it is the iniquity perpetrated 
against the higher principles of his spiritual 
nature, which presents the most revolting 
aspect of the crime committed against him. 
An attempt, by artificial contrivances to ex- 
clude a man from nature and from all inter- 
course with rational beings, to change the 
course of his human destiny, and to with- 
draw from him all the nourishment afforded 
by those spiritual substances which nature has 
appointed for food to the human mind, that 
it may grow and flourish, and be instructed 
and developed and formed; — such an at- 
tempt must, considered even quite inde- 
pendently of its actual consequences, be 
considered as, in itself, a highly criminal 
invasion of man's most sacred and most 
peculiar property, — of the freedom and 
the destiny of his soul. But above all, the 
following consideration must be added to 
all the rest. Caspar, having been sunk dur- 
ing the whole earlier part of his life in animal 
sleep, has passed through this extensive and 
beautiful part of it, without having lived 
through it. His existence was, during all 
this time, similar to that of a person really 



64 



dead : in having slept through his youthful 
years, they have passed by him, without his 
having had them in his possession ; because, 
he was rendered unable to become conscious 
of their existence. This chasm which crime 
has torn in his life, cannot any more be filled 
up ; that time, in which he omitted to live, 
can never be brought back, that it may yet 
be lived through ; that juvenility, which fled 
while his soul was asleep, can never be 
overtaken. How long soever he may 
live, he must forever remain a man with- 
out childhood and boyhood ; a monstrous 
being, who, contrary to the usual course 
of nature, only began to live in the mid- 
dle of his life. Inasmuch as the whole 
earlier part of his life was thus taken from 
him, he may be said to have been the sub- 
ject of a partial soul murder. The deed 
done to Caspar, differs from the crime that 
would be committed by one who should 
plunge a man of sound intellect, at a later 
period, into a state of stupid idiocy, uncon- 
sciousness, or irrationality, only in respect 
to the different epoch of life at which the 
blow of soul murder was struck : in one in- 



65 



stance, the life of a human soul was mutila- 
ted at its commencement; in the other it 
would be mutilated at its close. Besides, 
one of the chief momenta, which ought not 
to be overlooked, is this : since childhood 
and boyhood are given and destined by na- 
ture for the development and perfection of 
our mental as well as our corporeal life, and 
since nature overleaps nothing, the conse- 
quence of Caspar's having come into the 
world as a child at the age of early manhood 
is, that the different states of life which in 
other men are formed and developed gradu- 
ally, have in him, both now and forever been 
as it were displaced and improperly joined 
together. Having commenced the life of 
infancy at the age of physical maturity, he 
will, throughout all his life, remain, as regards 
his mind, less forward than his age, and as 
regards his age, more forward than his mind. 
Mental and physical life, which in the regular 
course of their natural development go hand 
in hand, have, therefore, in respect to Caspar, 
been as it were separated, and placed in an 
unnatural opposition with each other. Be- 
cause he slept through his childhood, that 
6* 



66 



childhood could not be lived through by him 
at its proper time ; it therefore still remains 
to be lived through by him ; and, it conse- 
quently follows him into his later years, not 
as a smiling genius, but as an affrighting 
spectre, which is constantly intruding upon 
him at an unseasonable hour. If, besides 
all this, we take into consideration the de- 
vastation which the fate of his earlier youth 
as will more fully be seen hereafter, has 
occasioned in his mind ; it must appear evi- 
dent, from the instance here given, that the 
conception of a robbery committed upon the 
intellect, does by no means exhaust the con- 
ception of a crime committed against the life 
of the soul. 

What other crimes may perhaps yet lie 
concealed under the iniquity committed 
against Caspar ? What were the ends which 
Hauser's secret imprisonment was intended 
to subserve ? — To answer these questions, 
would lead us too far either into the airy re- 
gions of conjecture or within certain confines 
which will not admit of such an exposure to 
the light. 

This crime, which in the history of human 



67 



atrocities is still almost unheard of, presents 
to the learned judge, as well as to the juri- 
dical physician, yet another very remarkable 
aspect. Scrutinies and judgments concern- 
ing certain states of mind, regard commonly 
only the criminal himself; inasmuch as their 
only end, is to ascertain, whether his actions 
are imputable to him or not. But here, an 
instance is given of a most extraordinary, and 
in its kind exclusively singular case, in which 
the matter of fact which is to prove the ex- 
istence of a crime, lies almost entirely con- 
cealed within a human soul ; where it can 
be investigated and established, only by means 
of inquiries purely psychological, and found- 
ed upon observations, indicating certain states 
of the thinking and sentient mind of the per- 
son injured. Even of the history of this 
deed, we have as yet no other knowledge, 
than that which we have received from the 
narration given of it by him to whom it was 
done : yet, the truth of this narration is war- 
ranted by the personality of the narrator him- 
self ; upon whose thinking and sentient mind 
(Geist und gemuth) — as we shall see more 
particularly hereafter — the deed itself, is 



68 



written in visible and legible characters. No 
other being than one who has experienced 
and suffered what Caspar has, can be what 
Caspar is ; and he whose being indicates 
what Caspar's does, must have lived in a 
state such as that in which Caspar says that 
he lived. And thus we see an instance, in 
which our estimation of the degree of credit 
which we are to give to the narrator of an 
almost incredible occurrence, is made to rest 
almost altogether upon psychological grounds. 
But, the evidence furnished in this instance 
upon such grounds, outweighs that of any 
other proof. Witnesses may lie, documents 
may be falsified ; but no other human being, 
except indeed he were a magician armed 
with a certain portion of omnipotence and 
omniscience, is able to produce a lie of such 
a nature, that, in which soever aspect you 
may present it to the light, it shall appear, 
in all of them, as the purest and most uncon- 
taminated truth, as the very personification 
of truth itself. Whoever should doubt Cas- 
par's narration, must doubt Caspar's person. 
But, such a sceptic might with equal reason 
be permitted to doubt, whether a person, 



69 



bleeding from a hundred wounds, and con- 
vulsed before his eyes with the agonies of 
death, was really a wounded and dying man, 
or was only acting the part of a wounded and 
dying man. Yet we must not anticipate the 
reader's judgment ; my exhibition of Caspar's 
person has only just commenced. 



CHAPTER V. 

Caspar had been already considerably 
more than a month at Nuremberg, when, 
among the latest novelties of the day, I heard 
of this foundling. No official accounts of 
this occurrence had yet been received by the 
highest authorities of the province ; it was 
therefore only as a private individual, and 
from a general regard to the interests of hu- 
manity and of science, that I went to Nurem- 
berg on the 11th of July, 1828, in order to 
examine this most extraordinary and singular 
phenomenon. Caspar's abode was at that 
time still in the Luginsland at the Vestner 
gate, where every body was admitted who 
desired to see him. In fact, from morning 
to night, Caspar attracted scarcely fewer 
visitors than the kangaroo, or the tame 
hyena in the celebrated menagerie of M. von 
Aken. I therefore also proceeded thither, 



71 



in company with Col. von D, two ladies 

and two children ; and we fortunately arrived 
there at an hour when no other visitors hap- 
pened to be present. Caspar's abode was in 
a small but cleanly and light room, the win- 
dows of which opened upon an extensive and 
pleasant prospect. We found him with his 
feet bare, clothed, besides his shirt, only with 
a pair of old trousers. The walls of his cham- 
ber had been decorated by Caspar as high 
as he could reach, with sheets of colored pic- 
tures. He stuck them to the wall, every 
morning anew, with his saliva, which was, 
at that time, as tough as glue ; # and, as soon 
as it became twilight, he took them down 
again, and laid them together by his side. 
In a corner of the fixed bench which extend- 
ed around the room was his bed, which con- 
sisted of a bag of straw, with a pillow and 
blanket. The whole of the remaining part 
of the bench was thickly covered with a va- 
riety of playthings, with hundreds of leaden 

* The saliva was so very gluey, that in taking these 
sheets down parts of them sometimes adhered to the 
wall and sometimes parts of the plastering of the wall 
adhered to the paper. 



72 



soldiers, wooden dogs, horses, and other toy®, 
such as are commonly manufactured at Nu- 
remberg. They had already ceased to 
occupy much of his attention during the day ; 
yet he was at no little trouble to gather care- 
fully together all these trifles and all their 
trifling appurtenances, every evening ; to 
unpack them, as soon as he awoke, and to 
place them in a certain order, in rows along- 
side of each other. The benevolent feelings 
of the kind inhabitants of Nuremberg had 
also induced them to present him with vari- 
ous articles of wearing apparel, which he kept 
under his pillow, and displayed to us with a 
childish pleasure not unmingled with some 
little vanity. Upon the bench there lay, 
mingled with these playthings, several pieces 
of money, to which, however, he paid no 
attention. From these, I took a soiled crown 
piece, and a quite new piece of twentyfour 
kreutzers* in my hand and asked him, 
which of these be liked best ? He chose the 

* A crown piece, is about the size of a Spanish dol- 
lar, and a piece of twentyfour kreutzers about the size 
of a quarter of a dollar. 



73 



small shining one ; he said the larger one was 
ugly, and he regarded it with a look ex- 
pressive of aversion. When I endeavored 
to make him understand, that the larger piece 
was nevertheless the more valuable of the 
two, and that he could get more pretty things 
for it than for the smaller one, he listened 
indeed attentively, and assumed for some- 
time a thoughtful stare; but at length he 
told me, that he did not know what I meant. 
When we entered into his apartment, he 
showed nothing like shyness or timidity ; on 
the contrary, he met us with confidence and 
seemed to be rejoiced at our visit. He first 
of all noticed the Colonel's bright uniform, 
and he could not cease to admire his helmet, 
which glittered with gold ; then the colored 
dresses of the ladies attracted his attention ; 
as for myself, being dressed in a modest 
black frock coat, I was at first scarcely hon- 
ored with a single glance. Each of us 
placed himself separately before him and 
mentioned to him his name and title. When- 
ever any person was thus introduced, Caspar 
went up very close to him, regarded him 
with a sharp staring look, noticed every par- 
7 



74 



ticular part of his face, as his forehead, eyes, 
nose, mouth, chin, &c, successively, with a 
penetrating rapid glance, and as I could dis- 
tinctly perceive, at the very last, he collect- 
ed all the different parts of the countenance 
which at first he had gathered separately and 
piece by piece, into one whole. He then 
repeated the name of the person, as it had 
been mentioned to him. And now, he knew 
the person ; and, as experience afterwards 
proved, he knew him forever. He averted 
his eyes, as much as possible, from every 
glare of light ; and he most carefully avoid- 
led the rays of the sun which entered direct- 
ly through the window. When such a ray 
accidentally struck his eye, he winked very 
much, wrinkled his forehead, and evidently 
showed that he was in pain. His eyes were 
also much inflamed, and he betrayed in every 
respect the greatest sensibility of the effects 
of light. 

Although his face became afterwards per- 
fectly regular, yet, at that time, a striking 
difference was perceptible between the left 
and the right side of it. The first was per- 
ceptibly drawn awry and distorted; and con- 
vulsive spasms frequently passed over it like 



"75 

flashes of lightning. By these spasms the 
whole left side of his body, and particularly 
his arm and hand, were visibly affected. 

If anything was shown him which excited 
his curiosity, if any word was spoken which 
struck his attention or was unintelligible to 
him, these spasms immediately made their 
appearance ; and they were generally suc- 
ceeded by a kind of nervous rigidity. He 
then stood motionless ; not a muscle of his 
face moved, his eyes remained wide open 
without winking, and assumed a lifeless 
stare ; he appeared like a statue, to be un- 
able to see, to hear, or to be excited to any 
living movement by external impressions. 
This state was observable whenever he was 
meditating upon anything, whenever he was 
seeking the conception corresponding to any 
new word, or the word corresponding to any 
new thing, or whenever he endeavored to 
connect anything that was unknown to him 
with something that he knew, in order to ren- 
der the first conceivable to him by means of 
the latter. 

His annunciation of words which he knew, 
was plain and determinate, without hesitating 



76 



or stammering. But coherent speech was 
not yet to be expected from him, and his 
language was as indigent as his stock of ideas. 
It was therefore also extremely difficult to 
become intelligible to him. Scarcely had 
you uttered a few sentences which he appear- 
ed to understand, when you found that some- 
thing was mingled with them which was 
foreign to him ; and, if he wished to under- 
stand it, his spasms immediately returned. 
In all that he said, the conjunctions, partici- 
ples and adverbs were still almost entirely 
wanting ; his conjugation embraced little 
more than the infinitive ; and he was most 
of all deficient in respect to his syntax, 
which was in a state of miserable confusion. 
" Caspar very well," instead of I am very 
Well ; " Caspar shall July tell," instead of, I 
shall tell it to Julius (the son of the prison 
keeper); such were his common modes of 
expressing himself. The pronoun I occurred 
very rarely ; he generally spoke of himself 
in the third person, calling himself Caspar. 
In the same manner, he also spoke to others 
in the third person instead of the second ; for 
instance, in speaking to a colonel or a lady, 



77 



instead of saying you, he would say colonel 
or lady such a one, using the verb in the 
third person. Thus also, in speaking to him, 
if you wished him immediately to understand 
who you meant, you must not say you to him, 
but Caspar. The same word was often used 
by h 'm in different significations; which often 
occasioned ludicrous mistakes. Many words 
which signify only a particular species, would 
be applied by him to the whole genus. Thus, 
for instance, he would use the word hill or 
mountain, as if it applied to every protube- 
rance or elevation ; and in consequence there- 
of, he once called a corpulent gentleman, 
whose name he could not recollect, " the man 
with the great mountain." A lady, the end 
of whose shawl he once saw dragging on the 
floor, he called, C| the lady with the beautiful 
tail. 5 ' 

It may be supposed, that I did not omit, 
by various questions, to obtain from him 
some account of his past life. But all that 
I could draw from him was so confused and 
so undeterminate a jargon, that, being yet 
unaccustomed to his manner of speaking, J 
could mostly only guess what he meant, while 
7* 



78 






much remained that was utterly unintelligible 
to me. 

It appeared to me not unimportant to make 
some trial of his taste in respect to different 
colors; he showed that, also in this particu- 
lar he was of the same mind as children 
and so-called savages. The red color, and 
indeed the most glaring red, was preferred 
by him to every other ; the yellow he dis- 
liked, excepting when it struck the sight as 
shining gold, in which case his choice waver- 
ed between this yellow and the glaring red ; 
white was indifferent to him, but green ap- 
peared to him almost as detestable as black. 
This taste, and particularly his predilection 
for the red color, he retained, as professor 
Daumer's later observations prove, long after 
the cultivation of his mind had very consid- 
erably progressed. If the choice had been 
given him, he would have clothed himself 
and all for whom he had a regard, from head 
to foot in scarlet or purple. The appear- 
ance of nature, green being the principal 
color of her garment, gave him no delight. 
She could appear beautiful to him, only 
when viewed through a red colored glass. 



79 



With professor Daumer's dwelling, to which 
shortly after my visit he was removed from 
the Lunginsland, he was not much pleased ; 
because, the only prospect that he had there, 
was into the garden, where he saw nothing 
but ugly trees and plants, as he called them. 
On the contrary, he was particularly pleased 
with the dwelling of one of his preceptor's 
friends, which was situated in a narrow un- 
pleasant street, because opposite to it and 
round about it nothing was to be seen but 
houses beautifully painted red. When a tree, 
full of red apples was shown him, he ex- 
pressed m&ch satisfaction at seeing it ; yet 
he thought that it would have been still much 
more beautiful, if its leaves also were as red 
as the fruit. Seeing a person once drinking 
red wine, he expressed a wish that he, who 
drank nothing but water, could also drink 
things which appeared so beautiful. 

There was but one advantage more which 
he wished« that his favorite animals, horses, 
possessed. It was, that, instead of being 
black, bay, or white, their color were scar- 
let. The curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, 
and the inflexible perseverance with which 



80 



he fixed his attention to anything that he was 
determined to learn or comprehend, surpass- 
ed everything that can be conceived of them ; 
and the manner in which they were express- 
ed, was truly affecting. It has already been 
stated, that he no longer employed himself 
in the day-time with his playthings; his 
hours throughout the day were successively 
occupied with writing, with drawing, or with 
other instructive employments in which pro- 
fessor Daumer engaged him. Bitterly did 
he complain to us, that the great number of 
people who visited him left him no time to 
learn anything. Tt was very affecting to hear 
his often repeated lamentation that the peo- 
ple in the world knew so much, and that 
there were so very many things which he 
had not yet learnt. Next to writing, draw- 
ing was his favorite occupation, for which 
he evinced a great capacity joined with 
equal perseverance. For several days past, 
he had undertaken the task of copying a 
lithographical print of the burghermaster Bin- 
der. A large packet of quarter sheets had 
already been filled with the copies which he 
had drawn ; they were arranged in a long 



81 



series, in the order in which they had been 
produced. I examined each of them sepa- 
rately : the first attempts resembled exactly 
the pictures drawn by little children, who 
imagine that they have drawn a face, when 
they have scratched upon the paper, some- 
thing meant to represent an oval figure with 
a few long and cross strokes. Yet, in al- 
most every one of the succeeding attempts, 
some improvements were distinctly visible ; 
so that these lines began more and more to 
resemble a human countenance, and finally 
represented the original, though still in a 
crude and imperfect manner, yet so that their 
resemblance to it might be recognised. I 
expressed my approbation of some of his last 
attempts; but he showed that he was not 
satisfied, and insinuated that he should be 
obliged to draw the picture a great many 
times, before it would be drawn as it ought 
to be, and then he would make it a present 
to the burghermaster. 

With his life in the world, he appeared 
to be by no means satisfied ; he longed to go 
back to the man with whom he had always 
been. At home, (in his hole,) he said, he 



82 



had never suffered so much from headache, 
and had never been so much teazed as since 
he was in the world. By this, be alluded to 
the unpleasant and painful sensations which 
were occasioned by the many new impres- 
sions to which he was totally unaccustomed, 
and by a great variety of smells which were 
disagreeable to him, &c ; as well as to the 
numerous visits of those who came to see 
him from curiosity, to their incessant ques- 
tioning of him, and to some of their inconsid- 
erate and not very humane experiments. 
He had therefore no fault to find with the 
man with whom he had always been, except 
that he had not yet come to take him back 
again, and that he had never shown him or 
told him anything of so many beautiful things, 
which are in the world. He is willing to re- 
main in Nuremberg, until he has learnt what 
the burghermaster and the professor (Dau- 
mer) know ; but then, the burghermaster 
must take him home ; and then he will show 
the man what he has learnt in the meantime. 
When I expressed my surprise, that he 
should wish to return to that abominable bad 
man; he replied, with mild indignation, " man 



83 



not bad, man me no bad done." Of his 
astonishing memory, which is as quick as it 
is tenacious, he gave us the most striking 
proofs. In noticing any of the numerous 
things whether small or great which were in 
his possession, he was able to mention the 
name and the title of the person who had 
given it to him ; and if several persons were 
to be mentioned, whose surnames were alike, 
he distinguished them accurately, by their 
christian names or by other marks of distinc- 
tion. About an hour after we had seen him, 
we met him again in the street, it being about 
the time when he was conducted to the 
burghermaster's. We addressed him ; and 
when we asked him whether he could recol- 
lect our names? he mentioned, without the 
least hesitation, the full name of every one 
of the company, together with all our titles, 
which must nevertheless have appeared to 
him as unintelligible nonsense. His physi- 
cian, Dr Osterhausen observed, on a different 
occasion, that when a nosegay had been given 
him and he had been told the names of all 
the different flowers of which it was com- 
posed, he recognised, several days afterwards, 



S4 



every one of these flowers ; and he was able 
to tell the name of each of them. But the 
strength of his memory decreased afterwards, 
precisely in proportion as it was enriched, 
and as the labor of his understanding was 
increased. His obedience to all those per- 
sons who had acquired paternal authority over 
him, particularly to the burghermaster, pro- 
fessor Daumer, and the prison-keeper Hiltel, 
was unconditional and boundless. That the 
burghermaster or the professor had said so, 
was to him a reason for doing or omitting to 
do anything, which was final and totally ex- 
clusive of all further questions and considera- 
tions. When once I asked him, why he thought 
himself obliged always to yield such punctual 
obedience ? he replied : " the man with 
whom I always was, taught me that 1 must 
do as I am bidden." Yet in his opinion, this 
submission to the authority of others, refer- 
ed only to what he was to do or not to do, 
and it had no connexion whatever with his 
knowing, believing, and opining. Before 
he could acknowledge anything to be certain 
and true, it was necessary that he should be 
convinced ; and, indeed, that he should be 



85 



convinced either by the intuition of his senses, 
or by some reasoning adapted to his powers 
of comprehension and to the scanty acquire- 
ments of his almost vacant mind, as to ap- 
pear to him to be striking. Whenever it was 
impossible to reach his understanding by any 
of these ways, he did not indeed contradict 
the assertion made, but he would leave the 
matter undecided, until, as he used to say, 
he had learned more. I spoke to him among 
other things of the impending winter, and I 
told him that the roofs of the houses and 
the streets of the city would then be all 
white, — as white as the walls of his cham- 
ber. He said, that this would be very pret- 
ty ; but he plainly insinuated that he should 
not believe it before he had seen it. The 
next winter, when the first snow fell, he ex- 
pressed great joy that the streets, the roofs 
and the trees had now been so well painted ; 
and he went quickly down into the yard, to 
fetch som.e of the white paint ; but he soon 
ran to his preceptor with all his fingers stretch- 
ed out, crying, and blubbering, and bawling 
out " that the white paint had bit his hand." 
A most surprising and inexplicable pro- 
8 



86 



perty of this young man, was his love of 
order and cleanliness, which he even carried 
to the extreme of pedantry. Of the many 
hundreds of trifles of which his little house- 
hold consisted, each had its appropriate 
place, was properly packed, carefully folded, 
symmetrically arranged, &c. Uncleanliness, 
or whatever he considered as such, whether 
in his own person or in others, was an abom- 
ination to him. He observed almost every 
grain of dust upon our clothes ; and when 
he once saw a few grains of snuff on my 
frill, he showed them to me, briskly indicat- 
ing that he wished me to wipe those nasty 
things away. 

The most remarkable fact of experience 
in respect to him w T hich I learnt, but which 
was not fully explained to me until several 
years afterwards, was the result of the follow- 
ing experiment, which was suggested to me 
by a very obvious association of ideas, lead- 
ing me to compare what was observable in 
Caspar, who had not come forth from his 
dark dungeon to the light of day before the 
age of early manhood, with the well known 
account, given by Cheselden, of a young 



87 



man, who had become blind but a few days 
after his birth, and who, in consequence of 
a successful operation, had been restored to 
sight, nearly at the same age. 

I directed Caspar to look out of the win- 
dow, pointing to the wide and extensive pros- 
pect of a beautiful landscape, that presented 
itself to us in all the glory of summer ; and 
I asked him, whether what he saw was not 
very beautiful. He obeyed ; but he instant- 
ly drew back with visible horror, exclaiming 
" ugly! ugly! " and then, pointing to the while 
wall of his chamber, he said, " there not 
ugly." To my question, why it was ugly? 
No other reply was made, than ugly ! ugly ! 
and thus, nothing remained for the present 
for me to do, but to take care to preserve 
this circumstance in my memory, and to ex- 
pect its explanation from the time, when Cas- 
par should be better able to express what he 
meant to say. That his turning away from 
the prospect pointed at could not be suffi- 
ciently accounted for, by the painful impres- 
sion made upon his optic nerve by the light, 
appeared to me to be evident. For his 
countenance at this time did not so much 



88 



express pain as horror and dismay. Besides, 
he stood at some distance from the window, 
by the side of it, so that although he could 
see the prospect pointed at, yet, in looking at 
it he could not be exposed to the impression 
made by rays of light entering directly into 
the window. When Caspar afterwards in 
1831, spent some weeks with me at my own 
house, where I had continual opportunities 
of observing him accurately, and of com- 
pleting and correcting the results of former 
observations, I took an opportunity of con- 
versing with him respecting this occurrence. 
I asked him whether he remembered my 
visit to him at the tower; and whether he 
could particularly recollect the circumstance, 
that I had asked him how he liked the 
prospect from his window, and that he had 
turned from it with horror, and had repeat- 
edly exclaimed ugly ! ugly ! and I then asked 
him, why he had done so ? and what had 
then appeared to him. To which he re- 
plied; " yes, indeed, what I then saw was 
very ugly. For when I looked at the window 
it always appeared to me, as if a window 
shutter had been placed close before my eyes 



upon which a wall painter had spattered the 
contents of his different brushes, filled with 
white, blue, green, yellow, and red paint, all 
mingled together. Single things as I now 
see things, I could not at that time recog- 
nise and distinguish from each other. This 
was shocking to look at; and besides, it 
made me feel anxious and uneasy ; because 
it appeared to me, as if my window had been 
closed up with this parti-colored shutter, in 
order to prevent me from looking out into 
the open air. That, what I then saw, were 
fields, hills, and houses ; that many things 
which at that time appeared to me much 
larger were in fact much smaller, while many 
other things that appeared smaller, were in 
reality larger than other things, is a fact, of 
which I was afterwards convinced by the 
experience gained during my walks ; at length 
I no longer saw anything more of the shutter." 
To other questions, he replied, " that, in the 
beginning,, he could not distinguish between 
what was really round or triangular, and 
what was only painted as round or triangular. 
The men and horses represented on sheets 
of pictures, appeared to him precisely as the 
8* 



90 



men and horses that were carved in wood ; 
the first, as round as the latter, or these, as 
flat as those. But he said, that in the pack- 
ing and unpacking of his things, he had soon 
felt a difference ; and that, afterwards, it bad 
seldom happened to him, to mistake the one 
for the other. 

Here then we behold, in Caspar, a living 
instance of Cheselden's blind man who had 
recovered his sight. Let us hear what Vol- 
taire,* or Diderot,f who in this instance 
may pass for the same person, has said of 
this blind person J " The young man whose 
cataracts were couched by this skilful sur- 
geon, did not for a long time distinguish either 
magnitudes, distances, or even figures from 
each other. An object of an inch in size, 
which, when placed before his eyes, concealed 
a house from his view, appeared to him as 

* In his Philosophie de Newton (Oeuvres completes 
Gotha, 1786, T. xxxi. p. 118.) 

t Lettre sur lesarengles a Pusage deceuxqui voyent 
(Londres 149) p. 1759 — 164. Diderot has copied 
Voltaire's account verbatim. 

t The author was unable to obtain Cheselden's ori- 
ginal work. 



91 



large as that house. All objects were pre- 
sent to his eye, and appeared to him to be 
applied to that organ, as objects of touch are 
applied to the skin. He could not distin- 
guish, by his sight, what by the aid of his 
hands he had judged to be round from what 
he had judged to be angular ; nor could he 
by means of his eyes discern, whether what 
by his feelings he had perceived to be above 
or below, was in fact above or below. He 
attained, though not without some difficulty, 
to a perception, that his house was larger 
than his chamber ; but he could never con- 
ceive, how the eye could give him this infor- 
mation. Many repeated facts of experience, 
were required in order to satisfy him that 
paintings represented solid bodies; and when, 
by dint of looking at pictures, he was con- 
vinced that what he saw before him were not 
merely surfaces, he felt them with his hands, 
and was then much surprised, to find only a 
plain surface without any projection. He 
then would ask which of his senses deceived 
him, his touch or his sight? Painting has, 
however, sometimes produced the same effect 
upon savages, the first time that they saw it : 



92 



they took painted figures for living men, in* 
terrogated them, and were quite astonished 
to find that they received no answer; — an 
error, which in them could certainly not -have 
proceeded from their being unaccustomed to 
the sight of visible objects." 

To little children also, during the first 
weeks or months after their birth, everything 
appears equally near. They will extend their 
little hands to reach the glittering ball of a 
distant steeple, and they know neither how 
to distinguish things that are actually great or 
small, from things that are apparently so, nor 
how to distinguish real, from painted objects. 
For in respect to objects both of the sight and 
of the touch, it is necessary, that both of these 
senses should mutually assist each other, in 
order to enable us to recognise them for 
what they really are. The explanation of 
this fact of experience depends upon the 
elementary law of all vision ; regarding which 
the great English philosopher Berkley has ex- 
pressed himself in the following manner : " It 
is, I think, agreed by all, that distance of it- 
self, and immediately, cannot be seen. For 
distance being a line, directed end-wise to the 



93 



eye, it projects only one point at the bottom 
of the eye. Which point remains invariably 
the same, whether the distance be longer or 
shorter. — I find it also acknowledged that 
the estimate we make of the distance of ob- 
jects considerably remote, is rather an act of 
judgment grounded on experience, than of 
sense. For example : when I perceive a 
great number of intermediate objects, such 
as houses, fields, rivers, and the like, w 7 hich 
I have experienced to take up a considerable 
space ; I thence form a judgment or con- 
clusion, that the object I see beyond them is 
at a great distance. Again, when an object 
appears faint and small, which at a near dis- 
tance I have experienced to make a vigorous 
and large appearance, I instantly conclude 
that it is far off. And this, it is evident, is 
the result of experience ; without which, 
from the faintness and littleness, I should not 
have inferred anything concerning the dis- 
tance of objects. 

The application of this law of optics, and 
of those facts, in explaining the delusion of 
the senses which Caspar experienced is ob- 
vious. As Caspar had never before been 



94 



accustomed to walk further, than from the 
tower to the burghermaster's house, or per- 
haps through one or two streets more ; as, 
in consequence of the irritability of his eyes, 
and of his fear of falling, he always looked 
down at his feet, and as, on account of his 
sensibility of the light, he always avoided 
looking out into the vast ocean of light around 
him; he had, for a length of time, no oppor- 
tunities of gaining experience concerning the 
perspective and the distances of visible ob- 
jects. All the numerous things in the coun- 
try at which he was looking, which, together 
with a comparatively small portion of the blue 
sky filled the aperture between the upper 
and lower window frame, must, therefore, 
have presented themselves to him as a great 
variety of formless and equally distant phe- 
nomena, arranged the one above the other. 
Hence the whole must have been viewed by 
him, as an upright table, upon which nume- 
rous and differently colored objects of dif- 
ferent sizes, had assumed the appearance of 
shapeless and parti-colored blots. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Though Caspar Hauser's almost constant 
and uninterupted intercourse with the nu- 
merous individuals, who thronged to him at 
all hours of the day, was unquestionably at- 
tended with the advantage of making him 
acquainted, in a short and easy manner, with 
a great variety of things and words, and of 
thus enabling him to make a very rapid pro- 
gress in learning how to speak with others 
and to understand them ; yet it is equally 
certain, that the heterogeneous influence of 
mingled masses of individuals to which he 
was thus constantly exposed, was by no 
means well adapted to promote an orderly 
development of this neglected youth, in agree- 
ment with. the regular course of nature. It 
is true, that perhaps not an hour of the day 
was permitted to pass, which did not in some 
way or other furnish new materials for the 
formation of his mind. But, it was impossi- 



96 



ble for the materials thus collected to assume 
the form and figure even of the most incon- 
siderable organic whole. All was mingled 
together in one, disorderly, scattered, and 
parti-colored mass, of hundreds and thousands 
of partial representations and fragments of 
thought, huddled together, above and be- 
low, and by the sides of each other, without 
any apparent connexion or design. If thus 
-the vacant tablets of his mind were soon 
enough superscribed, they were, at the 
same time, but too soon filled and disfigured 
with things, which in part at least were worth- 
less and prejudicial. The unaccustomed im- 
pressions of the light and of the free air ; the 
strange and often painful minglings of di- 
verse excitatives which continually flowed 
in upon his senses'; the effort to which his 
mind was constantly stimulated by his thirst 
of knowledge, laboring as it were to go be- 
yond itself, to fasten upon, to devour and to 
absorb into itself whatsoever was new to him, 
— but all was new to him — all this was 
more than his feeble body, and his delicate, 
yet constantly excited and even overexcited 
nerves could bear. From my first visit to 



97 



Caspar on the 11th of July, I brought with 
me the fullest conviction, which in its proper 
place 1 also endeavored to impress upon the 
minds of others, that Caspar Hauser must 
needs either die of a nervous fever, or be 
visited with some attack of insanity or idiocy, 
if some change was not speedily made in his 
situation. In a few days my apprehensions 
were partly justified by what actually occur- 
red. Caspar Hauser became sick: at least 
he became so unwell, that a dangerous illness 
was feared. The official statement of his 
physician, Dr Osterhausen's opinion, which 
on this occasion was sent by him to the ma- 
gistracy of the city, was to the following 
effect. 

" The multifarious impressions which all at 
once rushed upon Caspar Hauser after he 
had for years been buried alive in a dungeon, 
where he lived secluded from all mankind 
and left, to himself alone, and which did not 
operate upon him singly and successively, but 
in a mass and altogether ; the heteroge- 
neous impressions made upon him by the free 
air, by the light, and by the objects which 
surrounded him, which all of them were new 
9 



98 



to him ; the awakening of his mental indi- 
viduality, his desire of learning and of know- 
ing, as well as the change that was made in 
his manner of living, he ; the operation of 
all these causes, could not but produce effects 
which would powerfully shake, and finally 
injure the health of a person, possessing so 
very great a share of nervous sensibility. — 
When I saw him again, I found him totally 
changed ; he was melancholy, very much 
dejected and greatly enfeebled. There ap- 
peared to exist a morbid elevation of his 
nervous excitability. The muscles of his 
face were affected with frequent spasms. 
His hands trembled so much, that he was 
scarcely able to hold anything. His eyes were 
inflamed, they could not bear the light, and 
they gave him considerable pain, when he 
attempted to read, or to look at any object 
attentively. His hearing was so very sensi- 
tive, that all loud speaking caused him vio- 
lent pain ; so that he could no longer endure 
the sound of music, of which he had here- 
tofore been so passionately fond. He lost 
his appetite, became costive, complained of 
unpleasant sensations in his abdomen, and 



99 



upon the whole, he felt very unwell. — I felt 
very uneasy on account of his state of health, 
and particularly so, partly because his uncon- 
querable aversion to anything but bread and 
water renders it impossible to administer 
medicines to him, and partly, because it is 
to be feared that even the most inactive rem- 
edies might operate too powerfully upon him 
in the present highly excited state of his 
nerves." 

On the 18th of July, Caspar Hauser was 
released from his abode in the tower, and 
was committed to the domestic care and 
superintendence of Mr Daumer, a professor 
of a gymnasium, distinguished equally, for the 
excellent qualities of his mind and of his 
heart, who now took upon himself entirely 
the care of his education, and who had also 
hitherto paid a fatherly attention to his in- 
struction, and to the formation of his mind. 
In the family of this man, consisting of the 
worthy mother and sister of his instructor, he 
found in a manner a compensation for the 
loss of those beings, whom nature had given 
him, and of whom the wickedness of man 
had deprived him. 



100 

We may form some conception of the 
multitude of persons to whose curiosity Cas- 
par Hauser was exposed, from the circum- 
stance, that the magistracy of Nuremberg 
found it necessary, as soon as Caspar had 
been committed to the care of Professor 
Daumer, to insert the following notice in the 
public journals: 

" The homeless Caspar Hauser, has, in 
order to promote the development of the 
powers of his mind and body, been commit- 
ted, by the magistracy of the city of Nu- 
remberg to the care of a particular instruc- 
tor, who is well qualified to undertake that 
office. That both of them may be freed 
from any interruption in the pursuit of this 
object, and that Caspar Hauser may be able to 
enjoy that tranquillity, which in every respect 
he so much needs, his instructor has been 
directed, not to admit of any more visits to 
Hauser for the future. 

" The public in general, are therefore here- 
by duly informed thereof; so that all may 
avoid the mortification of being refused ad- 
mittance to him : and it is also notified, that 
pertinacious importunity in insisting upon 



101 

admittance to him, will if necessary, be 
resisted with the assistance of the police."* 
At Professor Daumer's Caspar Hauser was 
for the first time furnished, instead of the 
bag of straw upon which he had lain in the 
tower, with a proper bed, with which he 
seemed to be exceedingly pleased. He 
would often say, that his bed was the only 
pleasant thing that he had met with in the 
world ; everything else was very bad indeed. 
— It was only after he slept in a bed, that 
he began to have dreams. Yet, these he 
did not at first recognise as dreams, but re- 
lated them to his instructor, when he awoke, 
as real occurrences. It was only at a later 

* This notice nevertheless did not entirely produce 
the desired effect. As few strangers visit Nuremberg 
without going to see the grave of St Sebaldus, the 
paintings on glass in the church of St Lawrence, &c, 
so no one at that time, thought that he had fully seen 
the curiosities of Nuremberg, who had omitted to 
see the mysterious adopted child of that city From 
the time of Caspar's arrval at Nuremberg, to the 
present moment, many hundreds of persons of almost 
all European nations, of every rank, — scholars, artists, 
statesmen, and officers of every description, as well 
as noble and princely personages, — have seen and 
spoken with him. 

9* 



102 

period that he learned to perceive the differ- 
ence between waking and dreaming.* 

One of the most difficult undertakings 
was to accustom him to th e use of ordinary 
food, and this could be accomplished only by 
slow degrees, with much trouble and great 
caution. -j* The first that he was willing to 
take, was water gruel ; which he learned to 
relish daily more and more, and on this ac- 
count he imagined that it was every day 
made better and better; so that he would 
ask, what was the reason that it had not been 
made so good at first? Also all kinds of 
food prepared from meal, flour and pulse, 
and whatever else bore a resemblance to 
bread, began soon to agree with him. At 
length, he was gradually accustomed to eat 
meat, by mixing at first only a few drops of 

* These circumstances should not be left unnoticed 
by those who make the philosophy of the human mind 
their study; as they afford striking illustrations of 
the peculiar state of mind in which Caspar was at 
that time. 

f Before he became accustomed to warm food, he felt 
a constant thirst : and he drank daily from ten to 
twelve quarts of water. But even yet, he is still a 
mighty water drinker. 



103 

gravy with his gruel, and a few threads of 
the muscular fibres of meat, of which the 
juices had been well boiled out, with his 
bread; and by gradually increasing the 
quantity. 

In the notes respecting Caspar Hauser, 
which Professor Daumer has collected, he 
has made the following observations; " After 
he had learned regularly to eat meat, his 
mental activity was diminished ; his eyes 
lost their brilliancy and expression ; his vivid 
propensity to constant activity was diminish- 
ed ; the intense application of his mind gave 
way to absence and indifference ; and the 
quickness of his apprehension was also con- 
siderably diminished. Whether this was 
really the effect of his feeding on meat, or 
whether this bluntness was not rather the 
consequence of the painful excess of excite- 
ment which preceded it, may very justly be 
questioned. We may however conclude 
with much greater certainty, that the change 
of his diet, which was made by accustoming 
him to warm nourishment and to some ani- 
mal food, must have had a very perceptible 
effect upon his growth. In Professor Dau- 



104 

mer's house, he increased more than two 
inches in height, in a very few weeks. 

As the inflammation of his eyes, and the 
constant headache, with which every appli- 
cation of his eyesight was attended, made it 
impossible for him to read, to write, or to 
draw, Mr Daumer employed him in making 
pasteboard work, in which he very soon 
acquired considerable dexterity. He also 
taught him to play chess, which he soon 
learned, and practised, with pleasure. Be- 
sides this, he was employed in easy garden 
work, and made acquainted with various pro- 
ductions, phenomena, and powers of nature; 
so that not a single day passed by, which did 
not add something to his knowledge, and 
make him acquainted with innumerable new 
objects of surprise, wonder, and admiration. 

It required no little pains and much pa- 
tience in correcting his mistakes, in order to 
teach him the difference between things 
which are, and such as are not organized ; 
between animate and inanimate things ; and 
between voluntary motion, and motion that 
is communicated from without. Many 
things which bore the form of men or ani- 



105 

mals, though cut in stone, carved in wood, 
or painted, he would still conceive to be ani- 
mated, and ascribe to them such qualities 
as he perceived to exist in animated beings. 
It appeared strange to him, that horses, 
unicorns, ostriches, &c, which were hewn or 
painted upon the walls of houses in the city, 
remained always stationary, and did not run 
away. — He expressed hisindignation against 
a statue in the garden belonging to the house 
in which he lived, because, although it was 
so dirty, yet it did not wash itself. — When 
for the first time he saw the great crucifix 
on the outside of the church of St Sebaldus, 
its view affected him with horror and with 
pain : and he earnestly entreated, that the 
man who was so dreadfully tormented, might 
be taken down. Nor could he, for a long 
time, be pacified, although it was explained 
to him, that it was not any real man, but 
only an image, which felt nothing. He 
conceived every motion that he observed 
to take place in any object, to be a sponta- 
neous effect of life. If a sheet of paper 
was blown down by the wind, he thought, 
that it had run away from the table ; and, 



106 

if a child's wagon was rolling down a hill, 
it was, in his opinion, making an excursion 
for its own amusement. He supposed, 
that a tree manifested its life by moving its 
twigs and leaves ; and its voice was heard 
in the rustling of its leaves, when they were 
moved by the wind. — He expressed his in- 
dignation against a boy who struck the stem 
of a tree with a small stick, for giving the 
tree so much pain. — To judge from his ex- 
pressions, the balls of a ninepin alley ran 
voluntarily along ; they hurt other balls when 
they struck against them, and when they 
stopped, it was because they were tired. 
Professor Daumer endeavored for a long 
time in vain, to convince him that a ball does 
not move voluntarily. He succeeded at 
length in doing so, by directing Caspar to 
make a ball himself from the crumbs of his 
bread and afterwards to roll it along. — He 
was convinced that a humming top, which he 
had long been spinning, did not move vol- 
untarily, only by finding, that, after frequent- 
ly winding up the cord, his arm began to 
hurt him; being thus sensibly convinced, 



107 

that he had himself exerted the power which 
was expended in causing it to move. 

To animals, particularly, he for a long 
time ascribed the same properties as to men; 
and he appeared to distinguish the one from 
the other, only by the difference of their ex- 
ternal form. He was angry with a cat for 
taking its food only with its mouth, without 
ever using its hands for that purpose. He 
wished to teach it to use its paws and to sit 
upright. He spoke to it as to a being like 
himself, and expressed great indignation at 
its unwillingness to attend to what he said, 
and to learn from him. On the contrary, he 
once highly commended the obedience of a 
certain dog. Seeing a gray cat, he asked, 
why she did not wash herself that she might 
become white. When he saw oxen lying 
down on the pavement of the street, he won- 
dered why they did not go home and lie down 
there. If it was replied that such things 
could not be expected from animals, because 
they were unable to act thus, his answer 
was immediately ready : then they ought to 
learn it ; there were so many things, which 
he also was obliged to learn. 



108 

Still less had he any conception of the 
origin and growth of any of the organical 
productions of nature. He always spoke as 
if all trees had been stuck into the ground ; 
as if all leaves and flowers were the w r ork of 
human hands. The first materials of an 
idea of the origin of plants, were furnished 
him by his planting, according to the direc- 
tions of his instructor, a few beans, with his 
own hands, in a flower pot; and by his 
afterwards being made to observe, how they 
germinated and produced leaves, as it were, 
under his own eye. But in general, he was 
accustomed to ask, respecting almost every 
production of nature, who made that thing? 

Of the beauties of nature he had no per- 
ception. Nor did nature seem to interest 
him otherwise, than by exciting his curiosity, 
and by suggesting the question, who made 
such a thing? When for the first time, he 
saw a rainbow, its view appeared for a few 
moments to give him pleasure* But he soon 
turned away from it ; and he seemed to be 
much more interested in the question who 
made it ? than in the beauty of its apparition. 



109 

Yet, there was one view, which made a 
remarkable exception from this observation, 
and which must be regarded as a great, and 
never-to-be-forgotten incident, in the gradual 
development of his mental life. It was in 
the month of August, 1829, when, on a fine 
summer evening, his instructor showed him 
for the first time the starry heavens. His 
astonishment and transport, surpassed all de- 
scription. He could not be satiated with its 
sight, and was ever returning to gaze upon 
it; at the same time fixing accurately with 
his eye the different groups that were pointed 
out to him, remarking the stars most distin- 
guished for their brightness, and observing 
the differences of their respective color. 
"That," he exclaimed, " is indeed the most 
beautiful sight that I have ever yet seen in 
the world. But who has placed all these 
numerous beautiful candles there ? who lights 
them? who puts them out ?" When he was 
told that, Tike the sun with which he was al- 
ready acquainted, they always continue to 
give light, he asked again ; who placed thern 
there above, that they may always continue 
to give light ? At length, standing motionless, 
10 



110 

with his head bowed down, and his eyes 
staring, he fell into a train of deep and se- 
rious meditation. When he again recovered 
his recollection, his transport had been suc- 
ceeded by deep sadness. He sank trembling 
upon a chair, and asked, why that wicked 
man had kept him always locked up, and 
had never shown him any of these beautiful 
things. — He (Caspar) had never done any 
harm. He then broke out into a fit of cry- 
ing, which lasted for a long time, and which 
could with difficulty be soothed ; and said, 
that the man with whom he had always been, 
may now also be locked up for a few days, 
that he may learn to know, how hard itis 
to be treated so. Before seeing this beauti- 
ful celestial display, Caspar had never shown 
anything like indignation against that man ; 
and much less had he ever been willing to 
hear that he ought to be punished. Only 
weariness and slumber were able to quiet 
his sensations ; and he did not fall asleep — 
a thing that had never happened to him be- 
fore — until it was about 1 1 o'clock. Indeed, 
it was in Mr Daumer's family that he began 
more and more to reflect upon his unhappy 



Ill 

fate, and to become painfully sensible of 
what had been withheld and taken from him, 
It was only there, that the ideas of family, 
of relationship, of friendship, — of those hu- 
man ties, that bind parents and children and 
brothers and sisters to each other, were 
brought home to his feelings ; it was only 
there, that the names mother, sister and bro- 
ther were rendered intelligible to him, when 
he saw, how mother, sister and brother, were 
reciprocally united to each other by mutual 
affection, and by mutual endeavors to make 
each other happy. He would often ask for 
an explanation of what is meant by mother, 
by brother, and by sister; and endeavors 
were made to satisfy him by appropriate an- 
swers. Soon after, he was found sitting in 
his chair, apparently immersed in deep med- 
itations. When he was asked what was now 
again the matter with him ? he replied with 
tears ; " he had been thinking about what 
was the reason, why he had not a mother, a 
brother and a sister ? for it was so very pretty 
a thing to have them." As a state of perfect 
rest from all mental exertion, was at that time 
particularly indicated by his extreme excita- 



112 

bility, and, as exercise seemed absolutely 
necessary, to strengthen the feeble frame of 
his body; it seemed, that, among other 
modes of exercise, riding on horseback might 
be highly beneficial to him ; especially, as 
he seemed to have taken a great fancy for 
it. As formerly wooden horses, so now 
living horses had become his favorites. Of 
all animals, the horse appeared to him to be 
the most beautiful creature ; and whenever 
he saw a horseman managing his steed, his 
heart seemed to dilate with the wish, that he 
also might have such a horse under him. 
The riding master at Nuremberg, Mr Rum- 
pier, had the complaisance to gratify this 
longing ; and he received Caspar among his 
scholars. Caspar, who with the most intent 
watchfulness observed everything that was 
told to him or to the other scholars, had in 
the first lesson, not only imprinted the prin- 
cipal rules and elements of the art of riding 
upon his memory, but made them his own ; 
so that in a few days he had made such pro- 
gress, that old and young scholars, who had 
been taking lessons for several months, were 
obliged to acknowledge, that he was vastly 



113 

their superior. His seat, his courage, and 
his correct management of his horse, aston- 
ished every one ; and he would undertake 
feats of horsemanship which, besides himself 
and his riding master, none dared to attempt 
Once, when the riding master had been 
breaking in a fractious Turkish horse, he was 
so little alarmed at the sight, that he request- 
ed permission to ride that horse. — After 
having exercised himself for some time, the 
boundaries of the riding school became too 
narrow for him ; he longed to manage his 
horse in the open air ; and here he evinced, 
besides great dexterity, an inexhaustible en- 
durance, hardihood and tenacity of body, 
which could not be equalled, even by those 
who were most inured to the exercise of 
riding. He was particularly fond of spirited 
and hard trotting horses, and he often rode, 
for many hours together, without inter- 
mission, without tiring, and without chafing 
or feeling the least uneasiness. One after- 
noon, he rode in a full trot from Nurern-^ 
berg to the so called old Veste and back 
again ; and this feeble youth, who, about 
10* 



114 

that time, would have been so much fatigued 
with walking a few miles in the city, as to be 
obliged to lie down quite exhausted, and go 
to bed a few hours sooner than usual, return- 
ed from performing this gigantic feat, appa- 
rently, as little fatigued as if he had only been 
walking his horse from one gate of the city 
to the other. This insensibility may, as Pro- 
fessor Daumer supposes, be chiefly owing to 
the fact, that he had been sitting for so many 
years upon a hard floor is indeed by no means 
improbable. Yet, besides this we may, from 
Hauser's love of horses and his almost in- 
stinctive equestrian dexterity, be led to form 
the perhaps not altogether untenable conjec- 
ture, that by birth he must belong to a nation 
of horsemen. For, that abilities, which at 
first indeed were acquired artificially, but 
which have been sustained by practice 
throughout successive generations, may final- 
ly be propagated as natural propensities and 
distinguished capacities for acquiring them, 
i%not unknown ; of which fact, the dexterity 
in swimming peculiar to the South sea island- 
ers, and the sharp sightedness of the North 



115 

American hunter-nations may serve as in 
stances. 

Besides his extraordinary equestrian tal- 
ents, the extreme peculiarity, the almost pre- 
ternatural acuteness and intensity of his sen- 
sual perceptions, appeared particularly re- 
markable in Caspar Hauser, during his 
abode in Professor Daumer's house. 

As to his sight, there existed in respect 
to him no twilight, no night, no darkness. 
This was first noticed, by remarking that 
at night he stepped everywhere with the 
greatest confidence ; and that, in dark places, 
he always refused a light when it was offer- 
ed to him. He often looked with astonish- 
ment, or laughed at persons, who in dark 
places, for instance when entering a house 
or walking on a staircase by night, sought 
safety in groping their way, or in laying 
hold on adjacent objects. In twilight, he 
even saw much better than in broad day- 
light. Thus, after sunset, he once read the 
number of a house at the distance of 180 
paces, which in day light, he would not 
have been able to distinguish so far off. 



116 

Towards the close of twilight, he once point- 
ed out to his instructor a gnat, that was 
hanging in a very distant spider's web . At 
a distance of, certainly not less than sixty 
paces, he could distinguish the single berries 
in a cluster of elderberries from each other, 
and these berries from black currants. It 
has been proved by experiments carefully 
made, that in a perfectly dark night, he could 
distinguish different dark colors, such as blue 
and green from each other. 

When, at the commencement of twilight, 
a common eye could not yet distinguish 
more than three or four stars in the sky, he 
could already discern the different groups 
of stars, and he could distinguish the differ- 
ent single stars of which they were com- 
posed, from each other, according to their 
magnitudes and the peculiarities of their 
colored light. From the enclosure of the 
castle at Nuremberg, he could count a row 
of windows in the castle of Marloffstein ; 
and from the castle, a row of the windows 
of a house lying below the fortress of Roth- 
enberg. His sight was as sharp, in distin- 



117 

guishing objects near by, as it was penetrating, 
in discerning them at a distance. In anat- 
omizing plants, he noticed subtile distinctions 
and delicate particles, which had entirely 
escaped the observation of others. 

Scarcely less sharp and penetrating than 
his sight, was his hearing. When taking a 
walk in the fields, he once heard, at a dis- 
tance comparatively very great, the footsteps 
of several persons, and he could distinguish 
these persons from each other, by their walk. 
He had once an opportunity of comparing 
the acuteness of his hearing with the still 
greater acuteness of hearing evinced by a 
blind man, who could distinguish even the 
most gentle step of a man walking barefooted. 
Qn this occasion, he observed that his hear- 
ing had formerly been much more acute ; 
but that its acuteness had been considerably 
diminished, since he had begun to eat meat ; 
so that he could no longer distinguish sounds 
with so great a nicety as that blind man. 

Of all his senses, that which was the most 
troublesome to him, which occasioned him 
the most painful sensations, and which made 
his life in the world more disagreeable to 



118 

him than any other, was the sense of smell- 
ing. What to us is entirely scentless, was 
not so to him. The most delicate and de- 
lightful odors of flowers, for instance the 
rose, were perceived by him as insupporta- 
ble stenches, which painfully affected his 
nerves. 

What announces itself by its smell to oth- 
ers, only when very near, was scented by 
him at a very considerable distance. Ex- 
cepting the smell of bread, of fennel, of 
anise, and of caraway, to which he says he had 
already been accustomed in his prison, — for 
his bread was seasoned with these condi- 
ments — all kinds of smells were more or 
less disagreeable to him. When he was once 
asked, which of all other smells was most 
agreeable to him ? he answered, none at all. 
His walks and rides, were often rendered 
very unpleasant by leading him near to flower 
gardens, tobacco fields, nut trees, and other 
plants which affected his olfactory nerves ; 
and he paid dearly for his recreations in 
the free air, by suffering afterwards from 
headaches, cold sweats, and attacks of fever. 
He smelt tobacco, when in blossom in the 



119 

fields, at the distance of fifty paces, and at 
more than one hundred paces, when it was 
hung up in bundles to dry, as is commonly 
the case about the houses in the villages near 
Nuremberg. He could distinguish apple, 
pear, and plum trees from each other at a 
considerable distance, by the smell of their 
leaves. The different coloring materials 
used in the painting of walls and furniture, 
and in the dying of cloths, &c, the pigments 
with which he colored his pictures, the ink 
or pencil with which he wrote, all things 
about him, wafted odors to his nostrils which 
were unpleasant or painful to him. If a 
chimney sweeper walked the streets, though 
at the distance of several paces from him, he 
turned his face shuddering from his smell. 
The smell of an old cheese made him feel 
unwell and affected him with vomiting. 
The smell of strong vinegar, though fully a 
yard distant from him, operated so power- 
fully upon the nerves of his sight and smell, 
as to bring the water into his eyes. When a 
glass of wine was filled at table, at a con- 
siderable distance from him, he complained 
of its disagreeable smell, and of a sensation 



120 

of heat in his head. The opening of a bot- 
tle of champaigne, was sure to drive him from 
the table or to make him sick. What we call 
unpleasant smells, were perceived by him with 
much less aversion, than many of our per- 
fumes. The smell of fresh meat was to him 
the most horrible of all smells. When Pro- 
fessor Daumer, in the autumn of 1828, walked 
with Caspar near to St John's churchyard, in 
the vicinity of Nuremberg, the smell of the 
dead bodies, of which the professor had not 
the slighest perception, affected him so 
powerfully, that he was immediately seized 
with an ague, and began to shudder. The 
ague was soon succeeded by a feverish heat, 
which at length broke out into a violent per- 
spiration, by which his linen was thoroughly 
wet. He afterwards said, that he had never 
before experienced so great a heat. When 
on his return he came near to the city gate, 
he said that he felt better ; yet he complain- 
ed, that his sight had been obscured thereby. 
Similar effects w T ere once experienced by 
him, (on the 28th of September, 1828,) 
when he had been for a considerable time 
walking by the side of a tobacco field. 



121 

Professor Daumer first noticed the pecu- 
liar properties of Caspar's sense of feeling 
and his susceptibility of metallic excitements, 
while he was yet at the tower. Here, a 
stranger once made him a present of a little 
wooden horse and a small magnet, with 
which, as the forepart of the horse was fur- 
nished with iron, it could be made to swim 
about in different directions. When Caspar 
was going to use this toy according to the in- 
structions he had received, he felt himself 
very disagreeably affected ; and he imme- 
diately locked it up in the box belonging 
to it, without ever taking it out again, as he 
was accustomed to do with his other play- 
things, in order to show it to his visitors. 
When he was afterwards asked why he did 
so ? he said, that that horse had occasioned 
him a pain which he had felt in his whole 
body and in all its members. After he had 
removed to Professor Daumer's house, he 
kept the box with the magnet in a trunk ; from 
which, in clearing out his things, it was acci- 
dentally taken and brought into notice. The 
idea was suggested thereby to Professor 
11 



122 

Daumer, who recollected the occurrence 
that had formerly taken place, to make an 
experiment on Caspar with the magnet be- 
longing to the little horse. Caspar very soon 
experienced the most surprising effects. — 
When Professor Daumer held the north pole 
towards him Caspar put his hand to the pit 
of his stomach and, drawing his waistcoat in 
an outward direction, said that it drew him 
thus ; and that a current of air seemed to pro- 
ceed from him. The south pole affected him 
less powerfully ; and he said that it blew 
upon him. Professor Daumer and Professor 
Herrmann made afterwards several other 
experiments, similar to these and calculated 
to deceive him ; but his feelings always told 
him very correctly, and even though the 
magnet was held at a considerable distance 
from him, whether the north pole or the 
south pole was held towards him. Such ex- 
periments could not be continued long, be- 
cause the perspiration soon appeared on his 
forehead, and he began to feel unwell. 

In respect to his sensibility of the pre- 
sence of other metals, and his ability to dis- 



123 

tinguish them from each other by his feelings 
alone, Professor Daumer has collected a great 
number of facts, from which I shall select 
only a few. In autumn, 1828, he once acci- 
dentally entered a store filled with hardware 
and particularly with brass wares. He had 
scarcely entered, before he hurried out again, 
being affected with violent shuddering, and 
saying that he felt a drawing in his whole 
body in all directions. — A stranger who 
visited him, once slipped a piece of gold of 
the size of a kreutzer into his hand, without 
Caspar's being able to see it ; he said imme- 
diately, that he felt gold in his hand. — At 
a time when Caspar was absent, Professor 
Daumer placed a gold ring, a steel and 
brass compass, and a silver drawing pen un- 
der some paper, so that it was impossible for 
him to see what was concealed under it. 
Daumer directed him to move his finger over 
the paper without touching it ; he did so ; 
and by the difference of the sensation and 
strength of the attraction, which these diffe- 
rent metals caused him to feel at the points 
of his fingers, he accurately distinguished 



124 

them all from each other according to their 
respective matter and form. — Once, when 
the physician, Dr Osterhausen, and the royal 
crownfiscal Brunner from Munchen happen- 
ed to be present, Mr Daumer led Caspar, in 
order to try him, to a table covered with an 
oil cloth, upon which a sheet of paper lay, 
and desired him to say, whether any metal 
was under it ; he moved his finger over it and 
then said : there it drafts ! " But this 
time," replied Daumer, "you are neverthe- 
less mistaken ; for, 9 ' withdrawing the paper, 
" nothing lies under it." Caspar seemed at 
first to be somewhat embarrassed ; but he put 
his finger again to the place where he thought 
he had felt the drawing, and assured them 
repeatedly, that he there felt a drawing. 
The oil cloth was then removed, a stricter 
search was made, and a needle was actually 
found there. — He described the feeling 
which minerals occasioned him, as a kind of 
drawing sensation, which passed over him, 
accompanied at the same time with a chill, 
which ascended accordingly as the objects 
were different, more or less up the arm ; and 



125 

which was also attended with other distinc- 
tive sensations. At the same time, the veins 
of the hand which had been exposed to the 
metallic excitative, were visibly swollen. 
Towards the end of December, 1 S28, — when 
the morbid excitability of his nerves had been 
almost removed — his sensibility of the in- 
fluence of metallic excitatives, began gradu- 
ally to disappear and was at length totally lost. 
Animal magnetism manifested itself in him in 
a manner equally surprising ; and he retain- 
ed his receptivity of it for a much longer time 
than his receptivity of metallic excitements. 
But, as the phenomena which appeared in 
Caspar, agree in all their essential character- 
istics with similar appearances in other well 
known cases, it would be superfluous to add 
any other observations respecting them, than, 
that he always called his sensation of the 
streaming in upon him of the magnetic fluid, 
a blowing upon him. He experienced such 
magnetic sensations, not only when in con- 
tact with men, when they touched him with 
the hand, or when they, even at some distance, 
extended the points of their fingers towards 
11* 



126 

him, &ic, but also, when he was in contact 
with animals. 

When he laid his hand upon a horse, a 
cold sensation, as he said, went up his arm ; 
and when he was mounted, he felt as if a 
draught of wind passed through his body. 
But these sensations went over after he had 
several times rode his horse around the rid- 
ing school. 

When he caught a cat by the tail, he was 
seized with a strong fit of shivering, and felt 
as if he had received a blow upon his hand. 
In March, 1824, he was for the first time 
taken to a tent where foreign animals were 
exhibited : and agreeably to his wish, he 
was placed in the third row of spectators. 
Immediately as he entered, he felt an ague, 
which was greatly increased when the rattle- 
snake was irritated and began to shake its rat- 
tles ; and this was soon succeeded by a fever- 
ish heat and profuse perspiration. The eyes 
of the snake were not directed to the spot 
where he sat ; and he maintains, that he was 
not conscious of any sensation of terror or of 
apprehension. 



127 

We now leave Caspar's physical and phy- 
siological aspect, in order to contemplate the 
interior region of his mind, which, while it 
exhibits to us the acuteness of his natural 
understanding, enables us at the same time, 
to draw exact conclusions concerning the fate 
of his life, and the state of utter neglect, in 
which his mind was left by the profligacy of 
human beings. Though his soul was filled 
with a childish kindness and gentleness, 
which rendered him incapable of hurting a 
worm, or a fly, much less a man ; though 
his conduct, in all the various relations of 
life, showed that his soul was spotless and 
pure as the reflex of the eternal in the soul 
of an angel, yet as we have already observed 
he brought with him from his dungeon to the 
light of the world, not an idea, not the least 
presentiment of the existence of God, not a 
shadow of faith in any more elevated, in- 
visible existence. Raised like an animal, 
slumbering even while awake, sensible in the 
desert of his narrow dungeon, only of the 
crudest w T ants of animal nature, occupied 
with nothing but with the taking of his food, 
and the eternal sameness of his wooden 



128 

horses, the life of his soul could be com- 
pared only to the life of an oyster, which ad- 
hering to its rock, is sensible of nothing but 
the absorption of its food, and perceives only 
the eternal uniform dashing of the waves, 
and, in its narrow shell, finds no room, even 
for the most confined idea of a world without 
it. Still less was he capable of having the 
least presentiment of anything that is above 
the earth, and above all worlds. Thus came 
Caspar, unswayed indeed by prejudices, but 
without any sense for what is invisible, incor- 
poreal and eternal, tothis upperworld, where, 
seized and driven around by the stunning 
vortex of external things, he w T as too much 
occupied with visible realities to suffer the 
want of anything that is invisible to become 
perceptible to his mind. Nothing, at first 
appeared to him to have any reality, but 
what he could see, hear, feel, smell, or taste ; 
and his awakened, and soon also speculative 
understanding, would admit of nothing, that 
was not based upon his sensual conscious- 
ness, that could not be placed within the 
reach of his senses, that could not be pre- 
sented to him, in the form of some coarse 



129 

conception of his understanding sufficiently 
near to be brought home to him. All at- 
tempts made, in the common way, to awak- 
en religious ideas in his mind, were for a 
long time entirely fruitless. With great 
naivete, he complained to Professor Daumer, 
that he did not know what the clergymen 
meant by all the things that they told him ; 
of which he could comprehend nothing. In 
order somewhat to overcome his coarse 
meterialistic ideas, Professor Daumer en- 
deavored, in the following manner, to make 
him receptive of some preparatory notions 
of the possibility to conceive and to believe 
the existence of an invisible world, and par- 
ticularly the existence of God. Mr Dau- 
mer asked him, whether he had not thoughts, 
ideas, and a will. And when he acknow- 
ledged that he had, he asked him whether 
he could see them, hear them, he ? When 
he said that he could not, he made him 
observe, that he was therefore conscious 
that there do exist things which we cannot 
see, nor otherwise perceive externally. Cas- 
par acknowledged this ; and he was much 
astonished at this discovery of the incorpo- 



130 

real nature of our interior being. Daumer 
continued, "a being that can think and will, 
is called a spirit ; God is such a spirit, and 
between him and the world, there exists a 
relation, something like that between Cas- 
par's thought and his body ; as he, Caspar, 
can produce changes in his own body by 
his invisible thinking, and willing, as he for 
instance can move his hands and feet, so 
God can produce changes in the world ; he 
is the life in all things ; he is the spirit that 
is operative in the whole world I" — Professor 
Daumer now ordered him to move his arm, 
and then asked him " if he could not at the 
same time lift and move the other arm ?" 
Certainly ! " Now, hence you see then," 
continued Professor Daumer, Ci that your 
invisible thought and will, that is, your spirit, 
may be present and operative in two of your 
members at once, and consequently in two 
different places at the same time. The case 
is the same in respect to God ; but on a 
grand scale; and now, you may form some 
conception of what I mean by saying, that 
God is everywhere present." — Caspar 
evinced great joy when this had been ex- 



131 

plained to him ; and he said to his instructor, 
that what he had now told him, was some- 
thing " real ;" whereas other people had 
never told him anything upon that subject 
that was right. — Yet, instructions such as 
these, had for a long time no other effect 
than to render Hauser less refractory, when 
the idea of God was presented to his mind ; 
since thus a way was found, by which reli- 
gious ideas could be instilled in him. But 
the apparently inborn pyrrhoism of his na- 
ture, would nevertheless, on various occa- 
sions, break out anew in different forms and 
in different directions. — He once asked, 
whether we might pray to God for any par- 
ticular thing, and whether he would grant us 
what we prayed for; for instance, if he 
prayed to God to cure the malady of his 
eyes with which he was afflicted, would he 
do it? He was answered, that he was cer- 
tainly permitted to pray ; but that he must 
leave it to* the wisdom of God to determine, 
whether it was proper that his prayer should 
be granted. " But," he replied, " I wish 
for the use of my eyes, that I may learn and 
work ; and that must be good for me. God 



132 

can have nothing against it." If he was 
then instructed, that God has inscrutable 
reasons for refusing us even what most evi- 
dently appears to be good for us, in order, 
for instance, to try us, and to exercise our 
patience, such doctrines were always receiv- 
ed by him coldly,, and met with no acknow- 
ledgment. — His doubts, questions, and ob- 
jections, frequently embarrassed his instruc- 
tor not a little ; for instance, once when the 
conversation was concerning the omnipotence 
of God, he proposed the question : Can 
Almighty God also make time recede ? a 
question, which contained a bitter sarcastic 
allusion to the fate of his earlier life, and in 
the back ground, concealed the inquiry, 
whether God could restore his childhood 
and youth, which had been lost to him in a 
living grave. From these few remarks we 
may infer, what was in his mind, the state 
of positive religion, of christian dogmatics, 
of the doctrine of the atonement, and of 
similar doctrines, from stating his objections 
to which I willingly refrain. 

There were two orders of men, to whom 
Caspar had, for a considerable time, an un- 



133 

conquerable aversion; — physicians and cler- 
gymen ; to the first, " on account of the 
abominable medicines which they prescribed 
and with which they made people sick ;" 
and to the latter, because, as he expressed 
himself, they made people afraid, and con- 
fused them with incomprehensible stuff. 
When he saw a minister, he was seized with 
horror and dismay. If he was asked the 
cause of this, he would reply : " because 
these people have already tormented me 
very much. Once, when 1 was at the tower, 
four of them came to me all at once, and 
told me things which at that time I could not 
at all comprehend ; for instance, that God 
had created all things out of nothing. When 
I asked them for an explanation, they all 
began to cry out at the same time, and 
every one said something different. When 
I told them: all these things 1 do not yet un- 
derstand ; I must first learn to read and 
write, they replied : these things must be 
learned first. Nor did they go away, until 
I signified to them my desire, that they 
would at length leave me at rest." In 
churches, therefore, Caspar felt by no means 
12 



134 

happy. The crucifixes which he saw there, 
excited a horrible shuddering in him ; be- 
cause for a long time he involuntarily as- 
cribed life to images. The singing of the 
congregation, seemed to him as a repulsive 
bawling. u First," said he, after returning 
from attending a church, " the people bawl; 
and when they have done, the parson begins 
to bawl." 



CHAPTER VII. 

By the careful attention of Mr Daumer's 
worthy family, by the use of proper exercise, 
and by the judicious employment of his time, 
Caspar Hauser's health had been greatly 
improved. He was diligent in learning, in- 
creased in knowledge, and made considera- 
ble progress in cyphering and writing; and 
he had progressed so far in the latter, that 
about the summer of 1829, he was able, at 
the desire oft hose who directed his actions, 
to collect his recollections of his life into a 
written memoir. This first attempt at an 
original exposition of his thoughts, although 
it could only be considered as a document 
exhibiting the retarded progress, and the 
consequent indigence and awkwardness of 
his still childish mind, was nevertheless 
viewed by him, with the eyes of a young 
author when the first production of his pen 
is about to appear in print. This itch of 



136 

authorship, caused this so called history of 
his life, to be shown both to native and for- 
eign visitors; and the story soon ran, and 
even appeared in several public journals, that 
Caspar Hauser was employed in writing a 
history of his life. It is highly probable that 
this very report occasioned the catastrophe, 
which, soon after it was circulated, in the 
month of October, the same year (1829), 
was intended to bring his short life to a tragic 
end. Caspar Hauser, — if we may be per- 
mitted to indulge in conjectures — had at 
length become, to those who kept him se- 
cretly confined, a dangerous burthen. The 
child which they had so long fed, had be- 
come a boy, and was at length grown up 
into a young man. He became restless, his 
powers of life became more vivid, he some- 
times made a noise, and it was necessary to 
keep him quiet by means of severe chastise- 
ment, of which he still bore fresh marks 
when he came to Nuremberg. Why they 
did not get rid of him in some other manner ? 
Why they did not destroy him? Why as a 
child he had not been put out of the world ? 
Whether, it may not have been with instruc- 



137 

tions to murder him, that he was first deliv- 
ered to his attendant, who, either from com- 
passion, or with an intention to wait for times 
more favorable to the child who was to be 
made away with, or for other reasons that 
may be imagined, had, at his own risk, kept 
the child alive and fed it? — All this must 
be left to conjecture. However this may be, 
the time was come, or rather it was not 
come ; the secreted individual could no long- 
er be kept concealed ; it w 7 as necessary to 
get rid of him in some way or other, and — 
in a beggar's garb — he was sent to Nurem- 
berg. It was intended, that he should dis- 
appear there, either as a vagabond or an 
idiot, in some public institution, or, if any 
attention was paid to the recommendation 
which he brought with him, as a soldier in 
some regiment. Contrary to every expecta- 
tion, none of these events took place ; the un- 
known foundling met with humane commis- 
eration and became the object of universal 
public attention ; the public journals were 
filled with accounts of this mysterious young 
man and with conjectures respecting him. 
From being the adopted child of the city of 
12* 



138 

Nuremberg, for which the magistracy of the 
city had declared him, he became, at length, 
the child — of Europe. The development 
of Caspar's mind is everywhere spoken of, 
marvellous things are related to the public 
of his progress, and now, — this human ani- 
mal is writing a history of his life ! He who 
gives a history of his life, must be able to 
say something relating to it. 

Those persons, therefore, who had every 
reason to wish to remain in the darkness 
which they had drawn around themselves, 
and around all traces leading to them, could 
not but feel very uneasy at hearing of this 
intended autobiography. 

The plan to bury poor Caspar alive in the 
waves of a world entirely unknown to him, 
had failed ; and it was only now that Caspar's 
murder became, in the opinion of those who 
had committed this secret crime, in a man- 
ner, an act of self-defence. 

Caspar was accustomed, between 1 1 and 
12 o'clock, to go out of the house in order 
to attend a lesson in cyphering. But on 
Saturday, the 17th of October, he was direct- 
ed by his tutor to remain at home, because 



139 

he felt unwell. About that hour, Profes- 
sor Daumer took a walk; and — besides 
Caspar, who was known to be in his cham- 
ber, — none remained at home, but Daumer's 
mother and his sister, who, about that time 
were busy sweeping the house. 

The house, in which Caspar lived at Dau- 
mer's, lies in a distant and little frequented 
part of the city, and is situated on an open 
place of an extraordinary size, which can 
scarcely be overlooked. The house, which, 
being built according to the ancient custom 
of Nuremberg, is very irregular and full of 
edges and corners, consists of a front build- 
ing in which the laudlord lived, and a back 
building in which Daumer's family resided. 
A narrow house door leads, by a passage 
inclosing the yard on two sides, to the stair- 
case belonging to Daumer's quarters; and, 
besides a wood room, a place for poultry, 
and similar conveniences, there is in a corner, 
close under a winding staircase, a very low, 
small and narrow water closet. The small 
space in which this is, was rendered still 
smaller by a screen placed before it. Who- 
ever is in the entry upon a level with the 



140 

ground, (for instance near the wood room,) 
is very well able to observe, who comes 
down stairs and enters the water closet. 

About 12 o'clock the same day, when 
Professor Daumer's sister Catherine was 
busy sweeping the house, she observed, upon 
the staircase, which leads from the first story 
to the yard, several spots of blood and 
bloody footsteps, which she immediately 
wiped away, without, on that account, think- 
ing that anything extraordinary had happen- 
ed. She supposed, that Caspar might have 
been seized on the staircase with a bleeding 
at the nose, and she went to his chamber, to 
ask him about it. She did not find Caspar 
there ; but she observed,, also in his room,, 
near the door, a few bloody footsteps. 
After she had again gone down stairs, in 
order to sweep also the above mentioned 
passage in the yard, single traces of blood 
again met her eye, upon the stone pavement 
of the passage. She went on to the water 
closet where there lay a dense heap of clotted 
blood : this she showed to the daughter of 
the landlord, who had just come to the spot, 
and who was of opinion that it was the blood 



141 

of a cat. Daumer's sister, who immediately 
spunged the blood off, was now still more con- 
firmed in the opinion, that Hauser had stained 
the staircase : he must have trod upon this clot 
of blood, and neglected to wipe his feet be- 
fore going up stairs. — It was already past 
12 o'clock, the table was laid ; and Caspar, 
who at other times had always punctually come 
to dinner, staid this time away. The mother 
of Professor Daumer went therefore down 
from her chamber to call Caspar, but was 
as unsuccessful in finding him, as her 
daughter had been before her. 

Mrs Daumer was just in the act of going 
once more up into his chamber, when she was 
struck with observing something moist upon 
the cellar door, which appeared to her like 
blood. Fearing that some misfortune had 
happened, she lifted up the cellar door ; she ob- 
served, upon all the steps of the cellar, drops 
or large spots of blood ; she went down to the 
lowest step ; and she saw, in a corner of the 
cellar which was filled with water, something 
white, glimmering at a distance. Mrs Dau- 
mer then hurried back, and requested the 
landlord's servant maid to go into the cellar 



142 

with a candle to see what the white thing 
was that lay there. She had scarcely held 
the candle to the object pointed out to her 
when she exclaimed : " There lies Caspar 
dead." — The servant maid, and the son of 
the landlord, who in the meantime had come 
to their assistance, now lifted Caspar, who 
gave no signs of life and whose face was 
pale as death and covered with blood, from 
the ground, and carried him out of the cellar. 
When he was brought up stairs the first sign 
of life that he gave was a deep groan ; and 
he then exclaimed, with a hollow voice, 
" man ! man !" — He was immediately put to 
bed ; where, with his eyes shut, he from 
time to time cried out, or murmured to him- 
self, the following words and broken sen- 
tences. — " Mother ! — tell professor ! — man 
beat — black man, like sweep (kuchen) # — 

* This refers to an instance in which Caspar had 
been very much frightened by the chimney sweeper 
who was sweeping in the kitchen. The wordkuchen 
probably meant kuche — kitchen, which name he gave 
to the chimney sweeper, who, as mentioned above* 
had frightened him in the kitchen. T» 



143 

tell mother — not found in my chamber — 
hide in the cellar." 

Upon this he was seized with a severe 
ague, which was soon succeeded by violent 
paroxysms, and finally by a complete frenzy, 
in which several strong men were scarcely 
able to hold him down. In these fits, he bit 
a considerable piece out of a porcelain cup, 
in which a warm draught had been brought 
him ; and he swallowed it along with the 
drink. For almost fortyeight hours, he re- 
mained in a state of perfect absence of mind. 
In his delirium, during the night, he uttered 
from time to time, the following broken sen- 
tences : " Tell it to the burghermaster — 
Not lock up. — Man away ! — man comes ! 
— Away bell ! — I to Furth ride down. — 
Not to Erlangen in the whale — not kill, 
not hold the mouth shut — not die ! — Hau- 
ser, where been ; not to Furth to-day ; not 
more away ! head ache already. — Not to 
Erlangen* in the whale ! The man kill me ! 
Away ! Don't kill ! I all men love ; do no 
one anything. Lady mayoress help ! — Man, 
I love you too ; don't kill ! — Why the man 



144 

kill ? I have done you nothing. — Don't kill 
me ! I will yet beg that you may not be 
locked up. — Never have let me out of my 
prison, you would even kill me ! — You 
should first have killed me, before I under- 
stood what it is to live. — You must say why 
you locked me up," &c. Most of these sen- 
tences, he repeated, mingled incoherently 
with each other. The result of the visitation 
instituted, with the assistance of the medical 
officer of the city jurisdiction, by the court of 
inquiry appointed by the judicial authorities, 
— to which the case was at length referred, 
by the police court — was as follows : 

" The forehead of Hauser, who was lying 
in bed, was found to be hurt by a sharp 
wound in the middle of it, concerning the 
size and quality of which, the court's medical 
officer has given the following report, which 
was entered into the protocol. 

" The wound is upon the forehead, about 
10 J lines from the root of the nose, running 
across it ; so that two thirds of the wound are 
on the right, and one third of it on the left 
side of the forehead. The whole length of 
the wound, which runs in a straight line, is 
19J lines. 



145 

" At present, (October 20th) the edges of 
the wound are closed, and there scarcely re- 
mains an interstice of a quarter of a line be- 
tween them. But this is somewhat broader 
at its left end than throughout the whole 
course of the wound ; on which account it 
is to be presumed, that it there penetrated 
deepest. — As far as regards the origin of 
the wound it was evidently given to Hauser 
with a sharp cutting instrument, by a stroke 
or thrust(r). The sharp edges of the wound 
indicate the sharpness of the instrument's 
blade ; the straightness of the wound indi- 
cates that it was occasioned by a stroke or 
thrust(?) ; because?, if the wound had been 
purely a cut, its beginning and end would 
have been more shallow and narrow, but the 
middle deeper; and, on that very account, it 
would appear more gaping. It is however 
most probable, that it was made by a stroke 5 
because, if it had been made by a thrust, the 
adjoining 'parts would have been more bruis- 
ed." The wound, asthe physician declared, 
was in itself inconsiderable ; any other person 
would have been cured of it in six days. 
But, on account of the highly excitable state of 
13 



146 

Caspar's nervous system, it was twentytwo 
days before he recovered from the conse- 
quences of his wound. 

Caspar relates the substance of what hap- 
pened, as follows : " On the 17th I had been 
obliged to put off the cyphering lesson which 

I attended every day, at Mr Erlangen's, from 

II to 12 o'clock; because, having, an hour 
before received a walnut from Dr Preu, I 
felt very ill ; although I had not eaten more 
than a quarter of it. Professor Daumer, 
whom I informed of the circumstance, there- 
fore told me, that I should this time not at- 
tend my usual cyphering lesson, but remain 
at home. Professor Daumer went out, and 
1 retired to my chamber. 

" I intended to employ myself in writing ; 
but was prvented by indisposition from do- 
ing so, and compelled to go to the water- 
closet. While there, I heard a noise, like 
that which is usually heard when the door of 
the wood-room is opened, and which is well 
known tome; I also heard a soft sound of 
the house door bell ; this, did not however 
appear to proceed from ringing it, but from 
some immediate contact with the bell itself. 



147 

Immediately after, I heard gentle footsteps 
from the lower passage; and at the same 
time 1 saw, through the space between the 
screen before the private closet and the 
small staircase, that a man was sneaking 
through the passage. I observed the en- 
tirely black head of the man, and thought it 
was the chimney sweeper. Rut, when I 
was afterwards preparing to leave the nar- 
row apartment in which I was, and when my 
head was somewhat outside of it, the black 
man stood suddenly before me, and gave me 
a blow on the head; in consequence of which 
I immediately fell with my whole body on 
the ground." (Now follows a description 
of the man, which cannot well be communi- 
cated.) " Of the face and the hair of the 
man, I could perceive nothing ; for he was 
veiled, and indeed, as I believe, with a black 
silk handkerchief drawn over his whole 
head. 

" After I had lain, probably, for a consider- 
able time, without consciousness, I came again 
to my senses. I felt something warm trickling 
down my face, and both of my hands, which 
I raised to my forehead, were in consequence 



148 

thereof stained with blood. Frightened at 
this, I intended to run to mother ;* but, being 
seized with confusion and terror, (for I was 
still afraid, that the man who had struck me 
might attack me again,) instead of reaching 
mother's door, I ran to the clothes press be- 
fore my roorn.f Here my sight failed me, 
and 1 endeavored to keep myself upright by 
holding fast to the press with my hands.J 
When I had recovered, I wished again to go 
to mother's ; but, being still more confused 
and straying still further, instead of going up 
stairs, I discovered with horror that I had 
come down stairs, and was again in the pas- 
sage. The trap door of the cellar was 
closed. Whence I got the strength to lift the 
heavy trap door, is to this very moment in- 
conceivable to me. Nevertheless I did lift 
it, and slipped down into the cellar. § By 

* So he always called his foster mother, the mother 
of Professor Daumer. 

t Every step of Caspar's, which is mentioned intho 
above narrative, was found to be marked with bloody 
traces. 

t The bloody marks upon the press were still visible 
for several days afterwards. 

§ How true and naturally, are here the effects of 
terror and of fear described! — That Caspar did not 



149 

the cold water in the cellar, through which 
I was obliged to walk, I was restored to a 
more perfect state of self-consciousness. I 
observed a dry spot on the floor of the 
cellar ; and I sat down upon it. I had 
scarcely sat down, when I heard the clock 
strike twelve. I then began to reflect: 
* here you are entirely forsaken, no one wilL 
look for you here.' — This thought filled my 
eyes with tears, until I was seized with vom- 
iting, and then lost my recollection. When 
1 again regained my recollection, I found 
myself in my room upon the bed, and 
mother by my side." 

In respect to the manner in which he was 
wounded, I (the author of this) cannot join 
the opinion of the court. 

1 have several reasons, but which cannot 
with propriety be publicly made known, for 

creep into the cellar through the open cellar door and 
that it was really necessary for him first to open it, 
is a matter of fact, which cannot be doubted ; and it 
is equally true, that the opening of the cellar door, 
which to so feeble a person as Caspar was a Herculean 
labor, would at any other time or in any other cir- 
cumstances, have been quite impossible to him. 
13* 



ISO 

believing that Caspar Hauser's wound was 
neither made by a stroke, nor by a thrust j 
neither with a sabre, with a hatchet, with a 
chisel, nor with a common knife made for 
cutting, but with another well known sharp 
cutting instrument ; and that the wound was 
not aimed at the head but at the throat ; but 
(because, at the sight of the man and of the 
armed fist which was suddenly extending 
itself towards his throat, Caspar instinctively 
stooped) that the blow glanced from his throat 
which was protected by his chin, and was 
led upwards. The person who committed the 
act may have thought, when Caspar immedi- 
ately fell down bleeding, that it had fully 
succeeded ; and he dared not to remain any 
longer by his victim in order to examine 
whether it had fully succeeded or not, and in 
case it had not to repeat the blow, because, on 
account of the situation of the place, he had 
every moment great reason to fear that he 
would be detected by somebody. Thus 
Caspar escaped, with a wound on the fore- 
head. 

Other indications that might lead to the 



151 

discovery of the person who had committed 
the act, were soon discovered. Among 
others for instance, it was discovered that, 
on the same day and in the same hour when 
the deed was done, the man described by 
Caspar was seen to go out of Daumer's 
house ; that nearly about the same time, the 
same well dressed person described by Cas- 
par was seen washing his hands (which were 
probably bloody,) in a water trough which 
stands in the street, not very far from Dau- 
mer's house ; that, about four days after the 
deed, a well dressed gentleman, who wore 
clothes like those worn by the black man 
described by Hauser, went up to a low wo- 
man who was going to the city, and question- 
ed her earnestly concerning the life or death 
of the wounded Caspar ; that he then went 
with this woman close to the gate, where a 
handbill was to be seen concerning Hauser's 
wound, which had been stuck up by the 
magistracy ; and that he afterwards, without 
entering the city, absented himself in a very 
suspicious manner, &c. 

But, if the reader's curiosity or his love of 



152 

knowledge should inspire him with a wish 
to learn still more ; if he should ask me 
what were the results of the judicial inquiries 
which were instituted ; if he should desire to 
know, to what tracks they have led, what 
spots were actually struck by the divining rod, 
and what was afterwards done ; I shall be 
under the necessity of answering, that the 
laws, as well as the nature of the case, forbid 
the author to speak publicly of things, which 
only the servant of the state can be permit- 
ted to know or to conjecture. Yet I may 
permit myself to pronounce the assurance, 
that the judicial authorities have, with a faith- 
fulness at once unwearied and regardless of 
consequences, endeavored to prosecute their 
inquiries concerning the case, by the aid of 
every, even the most extraordinary means, 
which were at their disposal ; and, that their 
inquiries have not been altogether unsuc- 
cessful. 

But, not all heights, depths, and distances, 
are accessible to the reach of civil justice. 
And, in respect to many places in which jus- 
tice might have reason to seek the giant perpe- 
trator of such a crime, it would be necessary, 



153 

in order to penetrate into them, to be in pos- 
session of Joshua's ram's horns, or at least of 
Oberon's horn, in order, for some time at 
least, to suspend the action of the powerful 
enchanted Colossuses that guard the golden 
gates of certain castles. 

But what is veiled in blackest shades of night, 
Must, when the morning dawns, be brought to light. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

If Caspar, who may now be reckoned 
among civilized and well behaved men, were 
to enter a mixed company without being 
known, he would strike every one as a 
strange phenomenon. 

His face, in which the soft traits of child- 
hood mingle with the harsher features of 
manhood, and a heart-winning friendliness 
with thoughtful seriousness tinctured with a 
slight tinge of melancholy ; his naivete, his 
confidential openness, and his often more 
than childish inexperience, combined with a 
kind of sageness, and (though without af- 
fectation,) with something of the gravity of a 
man of rank in his speech and demeanor ; 
then, the awkwardness of his language, some- 
times at a loss for words and sometimes 
using such as have a harsh and foreign sound, 
as well as the stiffness of his deportment and 
his unpliant movements ; — all these, make 
him appear to every observant eye, as a 



155 

mingled compound of child, youth, and man, 
while it seems impossible at the first glance, 
to determine to which compartment of life, 
this prepossessing combination of them all 
properly belongs. 

In his mind, there appears nothing of 
genius ; not even any remarkable talent ; # 
what he learns, he owes to an obstinately 
persevering application. Also the wild flame 
of that fiery zeal, with which in the begin- 
ning he seemed anxious to burst open all 
the gates of science, has long since been ex- 
tinguished. In all things that he undertakes, 
he remains stationary, either at the com- 
mencement, or when arrived at mediocrity. 
Without a spark of fancy, incapable of ut- 
tering a single pleasantry, or even of un- 
derstanding a figurative expression, he pos- 
sesses dry, but thoroughly sound common 

* Except for horsemanship, of which he was al- 
ways passionately fond. In managing his horse, as 
well as in mounting and dismounting with dexterity 
and elegance, he equals the most skilful riding master. 
To many of our most distinguished officers, Caspar is 
in this respect an object of admiration. 



156 

sense, and in respect to things which directly 
concern his person and which lie within the 
narrow sphere of his knowledge and expe- 
rience, he shows an accuracy, and an acute- 
ness of judgment, which might shame and 
confound many a learned pedant. 

In understanding a man, in knowledge a 
little child, and in many things more ignorant 
than a child, the whole of his language and 
demeanor, shows often a strangely contrast- 
ed mingling of manly with childish beha- 
viour. With a serious countenance and in a 
tone of great importance, he often utters 
things, which coming from any other person 
of the same age would be called stupid or 
silly; but which coming from him, always 
force upon us a sad compassionate smile. 
It is particularly farcical, to hear him speak 
of the future plans of his life ; of the man- 
ner, in which, after having learned a great 
deal and earned money, he intends to settle 
himself with his wife, whom he considers as 
an indispensable part of domestic furniture. 
He never thinks of a wife in any other 
manner than as a house-keeper, or as an 



157 

upper servant, whom a man may keep as 
long as she suits him > and may turn away 
again, if she frequently spoils his soup, and 
does not properly mend his shirts or brush 
his coats, he. 

Mild and gentle, without vicious inclina- 
tions, and without passions and strong emo- 
tions, his quiet mind resembles the smooth 
mirror of a lake in the stillness of a moon- 
light night. Incapable of hurting an animal, 
compassionate even to the worm, which he 
is afraid to tread upon, timid even to cow- 
ardice,* he will nevertheless act regardless 
of consequences, and even without forbear- 
ance, according to his own convictions, 
whenever he thinks it necessary, to defend 
or to execute purposes, which he has once 
perceived and acknowledged to be right. If 
he feels himself oppressed in his situation, 
he will long bear it patiently, and will en- 
deavor to get out of the way of the person 
who is thus troublesome to him, or he will 



* Particularly since the attempt made to murder 
him. 

14 



158 

endeavor to effect a change in his conduct, by 
mild expostulations; but finally, if he can- 
not help himself in any other manner, as 
soon as an opportunity of doing so offers, he 
will very quietly slip off the bonds that con- 
fine him ; yet without bearing the least 
malice against him who may have injured 
him. He is obedient, obliging, and yielding ; 
but, the man that accuses him wrongfully, or 
asserts to be true what he believes to be un- 
true, need not expect, that from mere com- 
plaisance or from other considerations, he 
will submit to injustice or to falsehood ; he 
will always modestly, but firmly, insist upon 
his right; or perhaps, if the other seems in- 
clined obstinately to maintain his ground 
against him, he will silently leave him. 

As a mature youth who has slept away 
his childhood and boyhood, too old to be 
considered as a child, and too childishly 
ignorant to be regarded as a young man ; 
without companions of an equal age ; with- 
out country, and without parents and rela- 
tions ; as it were the only being of his kind — 
every moment reminds him of his solitude 
amidst the bustle of the w r orld that presses 



159 

upon him; of his weakness, feebleness and 
inability to combat against the power of 
those contingencies that rule his fate ; and 
above all, of the dependence of his person 
upon the favor or disfavor of men. Hence, 
his expertness in observing men, which was 
almost forced upon him by the necessity of 
self-defence ; hence the circumspect acute- 
ness — which byill disposed persons has been 
called slyness and cunning — with which he 
quickly seizes their peculiarities and foibles, 
and knows how to accommodate himself to 
those who are able to do him good or harm, 
to avoid offences, to oblige them, adroitly to 
make known to them his wishes, and to ren- 
der the good will of his favorers and friends 
serviceable to him. Neither childish tricks 
and wanton pranks, nor instances of mischief 
and malice, can be laid to his charge ; for 
the first, he possesses too much cool deliber- 
ation and seriousness, and for the latter, he 
possesses too much good nature, combined 
with a love of justice, by the dictates of 
which he regulates his conduct with a scru- 
pulous exactness, which without affectation 
approaches even to pedantry. 



160 

One of the greatest errors committed in 
the education of this young man and in the 
formation of his mind, was evidently, that, 
instead of forming bis mind upon a model of 
common humanity suited to his individual 
peculiarities, lie was sent a year or two ago 
to the gymnasium, Where fie was besides, 
made to commence in a higher class.* This 
poor neglected youth, who hut shortly be- 
fore, had fur the first time cast a look into 
the world, and who was still deficient in so 
much knowledge which other children ac- 
quire at their mother's hreast or in the laps 
of their nurses, was suddenly obliged to tor- 
ment his head with the latin grammar and 
latin exercises ; with Cornelius Nepos, and, 
finally even with Cesar's Commentaries. 

Screwed into the common forms of school 

* From thin situation ho, has, however, since I have 
been writing this small work, been delivered by the 
generosity of the noble Earl of Stanhope, who has 

formally adopted him as his footer-son. 

lie lives now at Ansbaeh, where he has lately been 
put under the care of an able schoolmaster, who has 
taken him to the bouse. Some time hence he will, 
under safe conduct, follow his beloved foster-father to 
England. 



1G1 

education, his mind suffered as it were its sec- 
ond imprisonment. As formerly the walls of 
his dungeon, so now, the walls of the school 
room excluded him from nature and from life ; 
instead of useful things he was made to learn 
words and phrases, the sense of which, and 
their relation to things and conceptions, he 
was unable to comprehend ; and thus, his 
childhood was, in the most unnatural 
manner lengthened. While he was thus 
wasting his time and the sufficiently scanty 
powers of his mind upon the dry trash of a 
grammar school, his mind continued to 
starve, for want of the most necessary know- 
ledge of things which might have nourished 
and exhilarated it, which might have given 
him some indemnification for the loss of his 
youth, and might have served as a foundation 
for some useful employment of his time in 
future. " I do not know" — he would often 
say with vexation, and almost in despair — "I 
do not know, what good all these things are 
to do me, since I neither can nor wish to 
become a clergyman." When once a pedant 
said to him : " the Latin language is indispens- 
ably necessary for the sake of the German 
language ; in order to have a thorough 
14* 



162 

knowledge of the German, it is necessary to 
learn the Latin," his good sense replied ; " was 
it then necessary for the Romans to learn 
German in order to have a thorough know- 
ledge of how they were to speak and write 
Latin?" 

We may judge, how the Latin suited Cas- 
par and Caspar the Latin, from the circum- 
stance, that, when this bearded latinist was 
staying with me for a short time in the spring 
of 1831, he had not yet learned by experi- 
ence ; that objects of sight appear smaller at 
a distance than they really are. He won- 
dered, that the trees of an alley in which we 
were walking became smaller and lower 
and the walk narrower at a distance ; so 
that it appeared as if at length it would be 
impossible to pass them. He had not ob- 
served this at Nuremberg ; and when he had 
walked down the alley with me, he was 
astonished, as if he had been looking upon 
the effects of magic, to find that all these 
trees were equally high, and that the walk 
was everywhere equally broad. 

The oppressive consciousness of his igno- 
rance, helplessness and dependence; the 



16S 

conviction that he shoul d never be able to 
regain his lost youth, to equal those who 
were of the same age with him, and to become 
a useful man in the world ; that, not only- 
had the most beautiful part of man's life 
been taken away from him, but that also the 
whole remainder of his life had been crippled 
and rendered miserable ; and finally, that 
besides all this, the miserable remainder of 
his respited life, was every moment threatened 
by a secret enemy, — by the dagger of an 
assassin; — these are the miserable contents 
of the tale that is told by the clouds of 
grief which overhang his brow, and not unfre- 
quently, pour themselves forth in tears and 
sorrowing lamentations. 

During the time while he was staying at 
my house, I often took him along with me 
in my walks ; and I conducted him once, on 
a pleasant morning, up one of our so called 
mountains, where a beautiful and cheerful 
prospect opens upon the handsome city lying 
beneath it, and upon a lovely valley sur- 
rounded by hills. Caspar was for a moment 
highly delighted with the view ; but he soon 
became silent and sad. 



164 

To my question concerning the reason of 
his altered humor, he replied : "I was just 
thinking, how many beautiful things there 
are in the world, and how hard it is for me 
to have lived so long, and to have seen noth- 
ing of them ; and how happy children are, 
who have been able to see all these things 
from their earliest infancy, and can still look 
at them. I am already so old, and am still 
obliged to learn what children knew long 
ago. I wish I had never come out of my 
cage ; he who put me there, should have 
left me there. Then I should never have 
known and felt the want of anything ; and I 
should never have experienced the misery 
of never having been a child, and of having 
come so late into the world." I endeavored 
to pacify him by telling him, " that in respect 
to the beauties of nature, there was no great 
cause for regretting his fate in comparison 
with that of other children and men, who 
had been in the world since their childhood. 
Most men, having grown up amidst these 
glorious sights, and considering them as 
common things which they see every day, 
regard them with indifference ; and retaining 



165 

the same insensibility throughout their whole 
life, they feel no more at beholding them, 
than animals, grazing in a meadow. For 
him (Caspar,) who had entered upon life as 
a young man, they had been preserved in all 
their freshness and purity ; and hereby no 
small indemnification was given him for the 
loss of his earlier years ; for herein he pos- 
sessed no inconsiderable advantage over 
others. He answered nothing, and seemed, 
if not convinced, yet somewhat comforted. 
But it will never be possible, at any time, 
entirely to comfort him respecting his fate. 
He is a tender tree, from which the crown 
has been taken, and the heart of whose root 
is gnawed by a worm. 

In such states of mind, and thus feeling 
his situation, religion, faith in God, and a 
hope in providence founded upon that faith, 
could not but find entrance into a heart so 
much in need of comfort. He is now, in 
the true sense of the word, a pious man ; he 
speaks with devotion of God, and is fond of 
reading books of rational edification. But 
to be sure, he would swear to none of the 



166 

symbolical books ; and much less would he 
feel happy, in a devout assembly of the dis- 
ciples of Hengstenberg and company.* 

Taken by times away from the nursery 
tales of his early attendants, buried as a child, 
and raised again to life as a ripe young man, 
he brought with him, to the light of the world, 
a mind free from every kind of superstition. 
As in the beginning it was with difficulty that 
he could be made conscious of the existence 
of his own spirit, he is in no wise inclined to 
believe in spectral spirits. He laughs at the 
belief of spectral apparitions, as the most 
inconceivable of all human absurdities : he 
fears nothing, but the secret enemy whose 
murderous steel he has felt ; and, if security 
could be given him, that he had nothing to 
fear from that man, he would walk at any 
hour of the night over a churchyard, and 
sleep without apprehension upon graves. 

His present mode of life is that which, is 
common to most men. With the exception 

* He was educated in the evangelical-Lutheran 
religion, which most of the inhabitants of Nuremberg 
profess. 



167 

of pork, he eats all kinds of meats that are 
not seasoned with hot spices. His favorite 
condiments are still carraway, fennel, and 
coriander. His drink continues to be water ; 
and only in the morning, he takes a cup of 
unspiced chocolate instead of it. All fer- 
mented liquors, beer and wine, as also tea 
and coffee, are still an abomination to him ; 
and, if a few drops of them were forced upon 
him, they would infallibly make him sick. 

The extraordinary, almost preternatural 
elevation of his senses, has also been dimin- 
ished, and has almost sunk to the common 
level. He is indeed still able to see in the 
dark ; so that, in respect to him, there exists 
no real night but only twilight ; but he is no 
longer able to read in the dark nor to recog- 
nise the most minute objects in the dark at a 
great distance. Whereas he was formerly 
able to see much better and more distinctly 
in a dark night than by day-light, the contrary 
is now the case. Like other men, he is now 
able to bear, and he loves th$ light of the 
sun, which no longer distresses his eyes. 
Of the gigantic powers of his memory, and 



168 

of other astonishing qualities, not a trace re- 
mains. He no longer retains anything that 
is extraordinary, but his extraordinary fate, 
his indescribable goodness, and the exceed- 
ing amiableness of his disposition. 



%\ r 



157 












































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^ 4P 




